Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

NIGERIA (GIFT OF A SPEAKER'S CHAIR)

Mr. Speaker: I have received a copy of a Resolution adopted by the House of Representatives of the Federation of Nigeria on Wednesday, 5th December of this year. I desire to read it to the House:

"Resolved,
That this House approves and wholeheartedly confirms the expression of thanks to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland offered on its behalf by the Standing Orders Committee, for the gift of a Speaker's Chair on 5th November, 1962.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Advance Factory, Greenock

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give further consideration to the need for an advance factory being constructed within the burgh of Greenock; and if he will make a statement.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll): No, Sir. The claims of the burgh of Greenock have been given very careful consideration, but for the present I am not prepared to go beyond the eleven Scottish advance factories announced since last June.

Dr. Mabon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is a very disappointing answer, especially having regard to the fact that today's total of unemployment is the highest since the war, which is very sad for a town like this? Has the right hon. Gentleman considered how he will bring to the town or the area ancillary industries to feed

the Rootes development which we hope will come into full swing in the spring of next year? Can he give us some hope in that direction?

Mr. Erroll: That supplementary question goes a good deal wider than the original Question. The facilities of the Local Employment Act wild be used to encourage firms which wish to set up component manufacture in Scotland, and our refusal to grant industrial development certificates in the congested areas of the Midlands will prevent the expansion of component manufacturers taking place in those areas.

Dewsbury

Mr. Ginsburg: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the number of jobs in prospect for the Dewsbury employment exchange area.

Mr. Erroll: About 40 jobs are known to be in prospect in Dewsbury from firms which have had industrial development certificates. I have no information of the number of jobs likely to be provided by firms which do not need new industrial building.

Mr. Ginsburg: This is a profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs. Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that unemployment in the Dewsbury area has doubled in two years? Also, is there not a lot of concealed unemployment especially among unmarried women? Since it has been generally recognised that the heavy woollen industry has special problems—I think that the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor but one recognised this fact—will he at least undertake to study during the Recess some of the economic problems of the area?

Mr. Erroll: I know that there are certain special problems in the area, particularly the absence of diversification, but unemployment in Dewsbury in December this year was 2 per cent.—below the national average—totalling 622 people, while there are nearly 500 industrial jobs in prospect in the surrounding employment exchange areas within travel-to-work distance.

Mr. Ginsburg: Will the right hon. Gentleman reply to the last part of my supplementary question? Will he consider studying the problems of the area,


particularly the problem of concealed unemployment, during the next few weeks?

Mr. Erroll: I will certainly look into the matter.

Local Employment Act, 1960 (Projects)

Mr. Ross: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many projects under the Local Employment Act were authorised in 1960 and 1961, respectively; how many jobs were expected to arise from these projects; and how many have so far been provided.

Mr. Erroll: One hundred and two between 1st April, 1960, when the Act came into force, and 31st December, 1960, to create 38,000 new jobs; and 161 in the calendar year 1961 to create 27,000 jobs. I cannot say how many of these jobs have already arisen.

Mr. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman will know that the position becomes even more unsatisfactory with every month that passes. This is the main instrument for dealing with the situation. Since today's figures show that Scotland now has over 100,000 unemployed, just over two years after the passing of the Act which was supposed to cure the trouble, will the right hon. Gentleman take urgent steps either to strengthen and extend the Act or Ito replace it with something really worth while?

Mr. Erroll: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Act is an excellent one and has done its job very well indeed. Without it, I think it is very doubtful whether we should have been able to get the two motor vehicle projects to Scotland. It has never been claimed that the Act would be able to overtake all unemployment which might arise at any time in future through a rapid decline of older industries.

Mr. Jay: Does the right hon. Gentleman explain the curious paradox that the Act has done its work very well although unemployment is much higher than it was before it started operating by saying that in so far as he creates new jobs by the operation of the new Act the Chancellor of the Exchequer creates even greater unemployment by his general economic policy?

Mr. Erroll: On the contrary, my right hon. Friend's economic policy is designed

to refute the economy to the extent necessary.

Mr. Ross: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when I asked a Question in March, just after the passing of the Act, the figure for unemployment in Scotland was 69,000? How can he say that the Act is working very well when the figure announced today is 100,600?

Mr. Erroll: I can only repeat what I have said, that we should consider the number of factories that have been steered to Scotland as a result of the Act.

Advance Factories, Ayrshire

Mr. Ross: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many advance factories have been built or promised in Ayrshire since the passing of the Local Employment Act.

Mr. Erroll: One.

Mr. Ross: Is this the factory which has been variously described as being in Ayrshire, Central Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and Cumnock? I was told in July, 1960, that there were 11,088 jobs in the pipeline for Scotland. How many people will this factory employ?

Mr. Erroll: It is one factory, and regret any inadvertent confusion which may have been caused by referring to its location as Central Ayrshire.

Mr. Rankin: Central Africa.

Mr. Erroll: It would not be much use to Ayrshire if it were in Central Africa.
In answering Questions, my hon. Friend and I have always used the geographical description rather than the constituency description. As I say, in using the phrase "Central Ayrshire", we meant the central part of Ayrshire and not the constituency of Central Ayrshire. I am very sorry if any confusion has been caused. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary did his best to clear up the misunderstanding during a recent Adjournment debate. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman how many people the factory will employ until we have a tenant for it.

Ashington and Morpeth

Mr. Owen: asked the President of the Board of Trade in what trades the 700 prospective new jobs will be in the


areas of AShington and Morpeth, Northumberland; and when they will be available.

Mr. Erroll: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the 700 new industrial] jobs estimated to be in prospect in the area covered by the Amble, Morpeth, Ashington and Bedlington Station Employment Exchange areas.
Among the industries in which these jobs will accrue are the manufacture of electrical resistors, building blocks and clothing. They are expected to accrue within the next three years.

Mr. Owen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the area covered by these assumed 700 jobs is an area of increasing unemployment? While we welcome any new jobs that can be secured for people in the area, surely it is not enough to assume that the 700 jobs will meet the urgent needs of my division and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne).

Mr. Erroll: I am not satisfied with the result so fair, but it is progress. I understand that the National Coal Board does not expect any pit closures in this area in 1963.

Consumer Council

Mr. Owen: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will now state the composition and terms of reference of the proposed Consumer Council.

Mr. Darling: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to announce the terms of reference, financial arrangements and composition of the proposed Consumer Council.

Mr. Erroll: As I said in the debate on the Second Reading of the Weights and Measures Bill, I am pressing on with this 'matter as rapidly as possible. I shall make an announcement as soon as I can.

Mr. Owen: The right hon. Gentleman says that he is pressing on with this "as rapidly as possible", but almost three months have gone by since the initial announcement was made. If we are to make effective progress in providing consumer protection, the establishment of this Council is urgently necessary.

Mr. Erroll: I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of this

Council, and, because I regard it as a very important body, I want to be quite certain that we obtain the services of the right people for it.

Mr. Darling: If it is true that the right hon. Gentleman is consulting all kinds of trade associations to make sure that he gets what he wants, namely, the right kind of Council, why is not he consulting this House about the composition of the Council, its terms of reference, and so on? Surely we have a right to be consulted before this body is set up?

Mr. Erroll: An opportunity to discuss the matter was provided on the Second Reading of the Weights and Measures Bill.

Mr. Darling: No.

Mr. Erroll: If the House as a whole wishes to have a debate on the subject, that can always be discussed through the usual channels. If individual Members —here I think I am following the general practice—have any ideas or suggestions about people suitable for consideration for appointment to the Council, I will be glad to receive them.

Mr. Darling: That is not the point. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman made a statement on the Second Reading of the Weights and Measures Bill, but we could not discuss the matter then. Since then we have asked him to help us to arrange a debate through the usual channels, not so much on the composition but on the terms of reference of the Council. As the Weights and Measures Bill provides that the Council shall be the advisory body to the Board of Trade on weights and measures, surely that point should also be discussed by the House before the right hon. Gentleman makes a move?

Mr. Erroll: If I go on considering so many things, I shall be in trouble with the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Owen) for taking such a long time. It was stated in advance of the Second Reading debate that it would be in order to refer to the Consumer Council in it, and I think that other hon. Members besides myself did so.

Roumania

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether ratification of the £4 millions order for a


British steel plant for Roumania is dependent upon facilities being given for Roumania to increase her exports to Great Britain; and what steps he proposes to take to increase quotas for imports from Roumania in 1963 and subsequent years to ensure that this order and other similar orders for heavy engineering goods are secured by British manufacturers.

Mr. Erroll: I understand that this order is dependent on the issue of a Roumanian import licence, which is, of course, a matter for the competent Roumanian authority. The hon. Member will be glad to learn that quotas have today been agreed with the Roumanians which will provide for an increase of over 16 per cent, both ways during the twelve months from 1st October, 1962.

Mr. Allaun: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that Answer, which is certainly a step in the right direction, may I ask him whether he is aware that, because of the great importance of this and similar orders to our steel works plant industry, there should be more than a 16 per cent. increase in our quota of imports from Roumania? Does this new agreement extend beyond the present duration of one year, which is too limited? We are exporting goods, such as steel works, on four-year arrangements, yet we have a limit of only one year for import permits.

Mr. Erroll: The arrangements usually run for twelve months. This is understood by both sides as a reasonable arrangement because it permits more frequent changes in the quota lists. As the amounts in both directions are increasing each year, the prospects for the Roumanians can be regarded as reasonably reassuring. But the greatest prospect for them to increase their earnings lies in better utilisation of existing quotas which were taken up to the extent of only 20 per cent. last year and expanding their sales of goods which are on open general licence.

Japanese Binoculars

Dr. Alan Glyn: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many pairs of optical binoculars of Japanese manufacture were imported into this country between June, 1961, and June, 1962; and what increase he anticipates when the Anglo-Japanese Treaty is ratified.

Mr. Erroll: Separate details of imports of binoculars are not available. In the twelve months to June, 1962, however, imports of telescopes, binoculars and monoculars from Japan were valued at £51,550. For the year to 30th September, 1962, the quota for Japanese binoculars was £60,000. From 1st October until the Treaty comes into force it will be at an annual rate of £80,000, and from the date on which the Treaty comes into force until the end of 1963 the quota will be increased to an annual rate of £100,000.

Dr. Glyn: While thanking my right hon. Friend for those figures, may I ask whether he is aware of the deep concern in this industry, which is doing all that it can to get its prices as low as possible against competition from Japan, whose products are coming in at a very low price? Is my right hon. Friend further aware that this industry has a wealth of technical skill and that it would be, a great tragedy if it were to leave the industry? Whatever may be the advantages to us of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, many of our industries, like the optical industry, are extremely worried about the effect 'of this trade upon their own industry.

Mr. Erroll: I should like to reassure my hon. Friend that during 1962 imports from other sources have been considerably greater than those contemplated from Japan. As to keeping in touch with the industry, one of my officials had a meeting with an important firm in the industry only a few days ago and we shall, of course, maintain our informal but close relations with the industry.

Kangaroo Meat, Rabbits and Fish Liver Oil

Mr. Jay: asked the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of total United Kingdom imports in 1961 was represented by imports of kangaroo meat, rabbits and fish liver oil.

Mr. Erroll: Separate trade statistics are not available, but it is estimated that total imports in 1961 amounted to about £2·5 million, or 0·06 per cent. of total imports.

Mr. Jay: Will the President of the Board of Trade convey my warmest greetings and congratulations to the


Lord Privy Seal on having secured, after 14 months of negotiation, free entry into the United Kingdom for 0·06 per cent. of our total imports?

Mr. Erroll: I was expecting the right hon. Gentleman to have a bit of fun with this Question and Answer. I will certainly pass on his greetings to my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal.

Mr. Jay: Does the President of the Board of Trade think that it is altogether fun?

Mr. Erroll: We never said that this would be an important element in the negotiations. Very much larger values have been secured for duty-free entry under other headings.

European Economic Community

Mr. Wise: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether it remains the policy of Her Majesty's Government that trading arrangements can be made with the Commonwealth equal or superior to those which might be made by adherence to the Treaty of Rome.

Mr. Erroll: It remains the Government's policy to make every effort to bring our negotiations with the European Economic Community to a successful conclusion.

Mr. Wise: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind, and, if possible, now publicly endorse, the word of one of his predecessors in office not so very long ago, who, when speaking for the Government, said:
The example of the Common Market in Europe has prompted us to re-examine our"—

Mr. Speaker: Order. A verbatim quotation is out of order in a Question.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he is taking to persuade firms from the countries of the European Economic Community to set up factories in areas scheduled under the Local Employment Act.

Mr. Erroll: As a first step I have sent personally to leading industrial firms in Western Germany a booklet in German describing the desirability of manufacturing in Britain and stressing the special advantages of development districts.

Other copies have been distributed by the Embassy and Consulates.

Mr. Thomson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when local authorities in development districts try to attract foreign firms to their areas they are told that the firms are waiting for a decision on British entry into the European Economic Community? Unless the Government tackle safeguards on a European scale in order to ensure proper distribution, new industry, if Britain goes into the Common Market, will be concentrated not in the development districts but in the golden triangle between the English Midlands, Paris and the Ruhr.

Mr. Erroll: There is nothing incompatible between the Local Employment Act and the Treaty of Rome. We will be able to continue to operate the Act as at present whether we are in the Common Market or not. If we join the Common Market I believe that we shall be able to encourage a considerable expansion of industry in many parts of Britain.

Mr. Wise: What prospect will my right hon. Friend have of attracting any such firms into development districts when our very modest protective duties have been removed?

Mr. Erroll: Development districts will be attractive by reason of financial and other inducements that I am empowered under the Act to give to them.

Mr. Marsh: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is impossible to encourage any firms to come to this country, or to promote any major industrial development here, until the outcome of the negotiations is known? Is it not essential that they should be either speeded up or ended?

Mr. Erroll: The negotiations are proceeding as quickly as practicable. Some foreign firms are currently interested in development in this country without waiting for a Common Market decision.

Clyde Shipyard (Closure)

Mr. Millan: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the Clyde shipyard of Simons-Lobnitz Limited at Renfrew is to be


closed next year with the loss of 1,400 jobs; and what steps he is taking to provide alternative employment in the area.

Mr. Erroll: I am aware of the proposed closure of this shipyard. I shall continue to use my powers under the Local Employment Act to encourage the introduction and expansion of industry on Clydeside.

Mr. Millan: Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that this considerable shut-down is a disaster to the town of Renfrew and extremely serious to the whole of the surrounding area? Has he had discussions with the firm concerned? Has he intervened with them? Is there much use in his directing all his efforts in looking to industries to expand in the area when this sort of thing can happen and, apparently, the Board of Trade does nothing at all about it?

Mr. Erroll: I am as disappointed as anybody about the closure. As regards the future of this firm, the departmental responsibility lies with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and it is for him to have discussions with the firm.

Mr. Millan: Is not the President of the Board of Trade at all concerned about this? Surely, he is the Minister ultimately responsible for employment. Does he not intervene in any way? Does he leave it to the Minister of Transport, in whom many of us do not have a great deal of faith?

Mr. Erroll: I assure the hon. Member that I have great faith in my colleague the Minister of Transport. While in no way wishing to minimise my responsibilities, I should like to make quite plain that I am not the Minister responsible for employment.

Merseyside

Sir H. Oakshott: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will now announce his decision regarding the application of the Local Employment Act to Merseyside.

Mr. Erroll: The matter is still under consideration. I can add nothing to the reply that my hon. Friend gave on 20th November to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell.)

Sir H. Oakshott: Will my right hon. Friend recognise that, in its efforts to attract industry, what Merseyside wants is the removal of a handicap under which it labours vis-à-vis other areas which are already scheduled? It wants a fair chance. The application of the Act would be an excellent way to enable Merseyside to help itself. Will my right hon. Friend announce his decision as quickly as he can?

Mr. Erroll: I will certainly announce my decision as quickly as possible. I want to ensure that all areas suffering from severe unemployment have a fair chance.

Japanese Trade Agreement (Shipbuilding)

Mr. Rankin: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the effects of the Trade Treaty with Japan on British shipbuilding.

Mr. Erroll: The Treaty will ensure that the Japanese authorities give Britain equal treatment with other countries in matters affecting the sale of ships and marine equipment to Japan.

Mr. Rankin: That would not seem to be of much help to British shipbuilding in view of the fact that the Japanese are, perhaps, not keenly interested in just selling ships. Does the President of the Board of Trade realise, however, that this Treaty, with its long-term basis and its yearly escalation of exports and imports, is exactly the sort of thing that we have for many years urged him to do with Russia? Why cannot he come to some sort of similar arrangement with Russia so that she might take our ships for her appropriate products and guarantee the help to shipbuilding, which, his colleague the Minister responsible for its care tells us, is in a worse situation today than it has ever been?

Mr. Erroll: This Question, which has been deferred on several occasions, deals solely with the Treaty and Japan and makes no reference whatever to Russia.

Mr. McMaster: Will my right hon. Friend use such occasions as this when negotiating trade treaties with other


countries to try to persuade such other countries to abandon the subsidising of shipbuilding which they adopt to our detriment?

Mr. Erroll: Whenever opportunity arises, we draw attention to these and other practices which we consider undesirable in the interests of free international trade.

Mr. Rankin: Even though there may be no direct reference in the Question to Russia, surely the suggestion that the President of the Board of Trade might imitate with another country what he has already done with one country should be entertained in view of our serious unemployment? Will not the right hon. Gentleman think about this?

Restrictive Practices and Monopolies

Mr. Jay: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has now completed the general review of policy on restrictive practices and monopolies announced early this year; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. The review covers a wide range of complex and difficult subjects and I shall need some time to examine the considerable body of evidence which has been submitted and to reach conclusions.

Mr. Jay: Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that in the debates in this House about the I.C.I.-Courtauld controversy—nearly a year ago—the one positive action which the President claimed to be taking was to institute this review into the whole matter? Is this another case of the Minister claiming that he is pressing on with all possible speed?

Mr. Erroll: I do not terribly like the sarcastic tone of the right hon. Gentleman. It is quite unjustified on this occasion. The delay, if any there has been, has been caused mainly by the time taken for people to write in and give us the benefit of their views and the further time taken in waiting for their replies to questions which arise from their original submissions. The important thing is to have a thorough inquiry. It is going very well indeed.

Mr. Jay: Can the President say how many years this review must take before a sarcastic tone is justified?

Mr. Erroll: About fifty-three, I should think.

China

Mr. Rankin: asked the President of the Board of Trade what embargoes and other restrictions are imposed on the export of commodities to China.

Mr. Erroll: The consolidated list of goods which may not be exported to China, in common with Soviet bloc countries, was published in the Board of Trade Journal on 28th September, 1962, and amendments were published on 26th October, 1962. The list is detailed and somewhat complicated but, broadly, the control covers weapons of war, atomic energy materials and other goods of strategic significance.

Mr. Rankin: I studied that at the time. Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that we have reached a stage in our economic life when we should be considering getting rid more and more of embargoes and other impediments to trade? Would he not agree that one way of increasing trade is by making more trade? Would he not accept the suggestion that he could make more trade with China if he were to get into talking terms with her? Will he reconsider his decision about receiving the Vice-Minister of Trade for China so that he might discuss these matters with him?

Mr. Erroll: A great deal of my time is taken up, quite properly, in efforts to promote and expand our international trade. I made it clear to Vice-Minister Lu at the time that his visit was only postponed, and I have made it clear since that we should like to see him in this country. In general, there are as many opportunities for trade with China as China's foreign exchange reserves will permit. But I do not think that the hon. Member should seriously suggest that we should sell China atomic bombs.

Mr. Rankin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely it is not for the right hon. Gentleman to cast the aspersion that an hon. Member who is opposed to the bomb should want it sold to another part of the world? I think that the right hon. Gentleman should withdraw that remark.

Mr. Speaker: It depends how seriously I choose to regard the way in which the words were spoken in the context. I think that we can stand tossing atomic bombs about in that if in no other fashion.

Hire Purchase (Furniture)

Mrs. Butler: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is now prepared to modify the hire-purchase regulations with regard to furniture in order to assist the industry in its present difficulties.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir.

Mrs. Butler: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of how much the speedy revision of the hire-purchase regulations would benefit not only the furniture industry but also many people, particularly young married couples? When is he likely to be able to make a statement?

Mr. Erroll: I do not contemplate making a statement on the lines suggested by the hon. Lady because I believe that it is best for the hire-purchase controls to be as uniform as possible.

Carpets (Door-to-Door Salesmen)

Mr. Darling: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to prevent fraudulent sales of carpets by door-to-door salesmen.

Mr. Erroll: Where such sales concern goods in relation to which a false or misleading written trade description is used and the matter is brought to my notice, my Department will investigate and, where appropriate, will prosecute under the Merchandise Marks Acts.

Mr. Darling: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware—I am sure that he is—of the difficulties of dealing with this by the present procedure under the Merchandise Marks Acts? What is needed is amending legislation, as proposed in the Molony Report. Is he further aware that there is now evidence that eight firms are operating this door-to-door swindle of selling carpets, and that one of those concerned is an alien in this country? If we provide him with information about the activities of this American, will he consult the Home Secretary about the man's status?

Mr. Erroll: My Department has not received any complaints about the door-to-door sale of carpets for three years. If the hon. Member will let me have evidence, I will gladly have it looked into. I am having the final recommendations of the Molony Report looked into with regard to this subject.

North-East Scotland

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the high rate of unemployment now prevailing in the North-East of Scotland Development Area, what particular aspects of industrial expansion he proposes now to encourage with his powers under the Local Employment Act.

Mr. Erroll: I propose to continue to use my powers under the Local Employment Act to encourage the introduction of any type of new industry and the expansion of existing industry which offers prospects of providing continuing employment.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply and for what he is trying to do in this area. Will he bear in mind, when he reviews it in the light of the serious nature of the figures there, that one of the surest ways of dealing successfully with the problem of unemployment in the more distant areas is to concentrate as much as possible on local natural resources and to develop them as far as one can?

Mr. Erroll: Certainly I will. One of the great advantages of the Local Employment Act over its predecessors is that it enables us to steer industries which are steerable to the places where they are most needed and can be most effectively developed.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the positive advice given to him during his recent visit to the north-east coast of Scotland by the Scottish T.U.C. and. particularly, by the Aberdeen Trades Council? Why has he not followed that advice? It was positive advice which, if followed, would lead to a diminution of the greatly increased unemployment in the area. What is he going to do about it?

Mr. Erroll: I receive a great deal of advice, nearly all of it sincere and well intentioned. I studied what was


put to me by the Scottish T.U.C. and also explained to it the reasons why it would not be possible or practicable for me to adopt some of the items suggested.

Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the amounts in loans and grants provided under the Local Employment Act to the cities of Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow during the most recent convenient twelve-month period.

Mr. Erroll: During the 12 months ended 30th November, 1962, total financial assistance offered, excluding offers declined, to projects in the Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow groups of employment exchange areas amounted to £161,000, nil and £422,000, respectively.

Mr. Thomson: I thank the right hon. Gentleman, but can he say what he is doing to try to increase the amount of financial aid to the Dundee area in view of the present very difficult employment situation, particularly in engineering?

Mr. Erroll: Financial aid, of course, follows the steering of a project to a particular area, and the full range of assistance under the Act is available to any project we may successfully steer to Dundee in the future.

Swiss Watches

Mr. Lipton: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many firms are licensed to import Swiss watches; when they were selected; and on what basis the selection was made.

Mr. Erroll: In 1962, 304 firms were licensed to import Swiss watches costing less than £5 c.i.f. They were selected in 1946 on the basis of their imports of watches from all sources in the year 1st September, 1938, to 31st August, 1939.

Mr. Lipton: Is it not quite ridiculous for the right hon. Gentleman to maintain this antiquated restriction, imposed in 1946 on the basis of imports in the year before the last war? When will the Government abandon this last relic of war-time controls and give effect at

long last to their slogan, "Set the people free"?

Mr. Erroll: The longer an import control lasts the more unrealistic the basis of the allocation of import licences appears to be. Unsatisfactory as it may seem, however, this is the best method that can be devised while it remains necessary to control the import of watches costing less than £5.

Mr. Lipton: Is the right hon. Gentleman willing to hear any further representations about how to get rid of this control and to substitute a more satisfactory method?

Mr. Erroll: Any fresh proposal would have to satisfy existing licence holders as well as newcomers to the trade.

Mr. Elwyn Jones: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an estimate of the percentage of Swiss watches sold in this country and smuggled in without payment of Customs duty?

Mr. Erroll: Smuggled items do not appear in Board of Trade returns.

Northern Region

Dame Irene Ward: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will apply the provisions of the Local Employment Act to the whole of the northern region in order that prospective industrialists may be free to choose a site in any part of the region which is most suitable for their needs;
(2) if he will extend the appropriate provisions of the Local Employment Act to all areas of Northumberland, Durham and Cumberland where the decline in shipbuilding, ship-repairing, coal mining and heavy engineering threatens the employment of the community.

Mr. Erroll: The provisions of the Local Employment Act already apply to all those areas in the Northern region in which high and persistent unemployment exists or is threatened, due to the decline in shipbuilding, ship-repairing, coal mining and heavy engineering or for other reasons. I have no power to extend the Act to other areas, but I am always prepared to assist firms outside the development districts if they will provide work for people living in the development districts.

Dame Irene Ward: Is my right hon. Friend aware that from that Answer it is quite obvious that he has not yet had the memorandum and all the representations from all interests in these areas which have been made to the Prime Minister? Before my right hon. Friend commits himself to that kind of a statement, would not it be better to remember that even the Prime Minister had time to receive his northern Conservative colleagues, who emphasised this matter, and will he please consider the point of view that has been expressed? As we are considering National Productivity Year, it would be a good thing if the communications between the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend were speeded up. We might then have a better reply than we have had this afternoon.

Mr. Erroll: I have received the memorandum, and I am looking forward to studying it closely. I should like to point out to my hon. Friend that the important thing is to get as many jobs as possible close to the locality where the unemployment actually exists. We are not helping the unemployed by building factories many miles away from where they are unemployed.

Mr. Jay: Will the right hon. Gentleman note that the adoption of his hon. Friend's excellent suggestion in Question No. 31 would mean returning to the system which prevailed under the Labour Government when this policy really worked, and there is a strong prima facie argument in favour of it?

Mr. Erroll: It was because the policy was not working particularly well that we introduced the Local Employment Act, 1960.

Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he can answer this question? Is he aware that there was a firm of great repute which wished to go to the north-east coast, but which required ample supplies of water? Ample supplies of water are not necessarily available on the north-east coast in areas of high unemployment, but if the firm had gone to that area it would have provided overall employment, which is very important when one is faced with a decline in coal mining

and shipbuilding, and in that context one cannot argue as my right hon. Friend does about these matters.

Mr. Erroll: Without going into the details of this application, I assure my hon. Friend that to the extent to which this firm would have provided employment for these very development districts it would have been proportionately entitled to assistance under the Act.

Mr. Shinwell: Can the right hon. Gentleman indicate the areas of low unemployment in the north-east region which justify their exclusion from the Local Employment Act? When the hon. Lady does occasionally make a sensible suggestion. is not there every reason why it should be adopted by the Government?

Mr. Erroll: As I said to my hon. Friend, I am looking forward to studying the memorandum very carefully. As regards the areas in the North-East to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, I say that broadly they are those which are not scheduled as development districts.

Mr. Jay: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that unemployment in the northeast region in June, 1961, was 1·8 and now, after three years of this Act, it is nearly 4 per cent?

Mr. Erroll: Yes, I read my figures.

Falmouth and Penryn

Mr. Hayman: asked the President of the Board of Trade what are the prospects of new industries being established in Falmouth and Penryn.

Mr. Erroll: The facilities of the Local Employment Act are available in Falmouth and Penryn, and we will continue to do all we can to bring the area to the notice of suitable firms. There is no new jobs in prospect in Falmouth, but there are a considerable number in the neighbouring area of Camborne-Redruth.

Mr. Hayman: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear in mind that at Falmouth recently the percentage of unemployment was 20, and in the ship-repairing yard it was 66·6? Will the right hon. Gentleman do something to


see that new industries are taken to Falmouth and Penryn which are 15 miles away from the industrial development area of Camborne and Redruth?

Mr. Erroll: Unemployment in the Falmouth Employment Exchange Area fluctuates widely according to the season aid the state of employment or unemployment in the Silley Cox ship-repairing yard, but I have recently received a report that four boats have come into the dockyard for repair, and these should reduce the male unemployment rate.

Mr. Hayman: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear in mind that the average periods of unemployment in the Silley Cox ship-repairing yard have been increasing, and the periods have been lengthening, and that the position really is very serious at the present time?

Mr. Erroll: I do not wish in any way to minimise the seriousness of the situation, but I thought it only right to mention also the bit of good news which I have given.

Head Office Staff

Mr. Lawson: asked the President of the Board of Trade what is the number of persons employed in the head office of his Department; and where that head office is located.

Mr. Erroll: The number employed at the Board of Trade head office in Horse Guards Avenue is 1,981.

Mr. Lawson: Is not this a very large Department to be centred here in London? Does not the President of the Board of Trade think that he should give a lead to industry—since he is urging industry to go to areas of high unemployment—by establishing his head office in some such area, thereby taking a leaf out of the book of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance?

Mr. Erroll: I have looked at the matter very carefully, but considering the range of work and the nature of that work which must be done at head office the total headquarters staff is quite modest. Other Board of Trade offices are scattered elsewhere, and we have regional offices as well, so that nothing like everything is concentrated on Horse Guards Avenue.

Mr. Lawson: But need the head office itself be in the centre? Could not quite a small office be used for the purpose here?

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. It is always a surprise to me when I go in at the front door to see so many other people going through at the same time, a number of them being callers who want to do business With the Board of Trade, and I am sure that in the interests of our commerce and trade it is right that the head office should be where it is.

Mr. G. Brown: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that bigger surprise is felt by those who see him going through the front door every day?

Scottish Industrial Estates

Mr. Lawson: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give powers to the Scottish Industrial Estates Management Corporation to permit that body to promote and run such selected industrial undertakings as the Corporation considers could be successfully developed within its area.

Mr. Erroll: No, Sir.

Mr. Lawson: Since it is obvious that private enterprise has dismally failed to meet the problems of areas like Scotland, the North-East and Northern Ireland, will the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends see that public enterprise is given this task? Will not he see that some new step is taken? Will he take it from hon. Members on this side of the House that unless some new step is taken there will be no way of meeting the problem?

Mr. Erroll: Private enterprise has responded magnificently to the stimulus of the Local Employment Act, 1960. I do not think that publicly-owned manufacturing plants would provide a satisfactory way of trying to provide additional employment in these hard-hit areas. The former Labour Government had a good deal of experience of trying to make articles at Royal Ordnance factories for sale to the public. It was an awful flop.

Mr. Short: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the provision of £500,000 worth of aid to the North-East is responding magnificently to the stimulus of the Local Employment Act?

Mr. Erroll: I was dealing particularly with Scotland, but some worth-while projects are also going on in the North-East.

Mr. Albu: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that there are a number of worth-while scientific and technological projects which might be fostered by the Government themselves both on a development and on a manufacturing basis, especially in those areas which badly need an injection of scientific skill and technological expertise?

Mr. Erroll: I shall be glad if the hon. Member will give me some details.

Mr. McMaster: In concentrating on schemes for Scotland and the North-East, can my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that Northern Ireland will not be neglected?

Mr. Erroll: I should have thought that the fact that we were able to steer the Michelin Tyres project to Northern Ireland was proof of my sincerity towards Northern Ireland.

Mr. Lawson: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that after all his efforts to stimulate development in the North-East and in Scotland there are in Scotland now many thousand fewer men and boys working than there were when he started these efforts? Will he abandon these efforts and take some new step which may have some success, such as is suggested here?

Mr. Erroll: I am aware of the problem of Scotland, but it would be wrong to abandon this policy and substitute another, because this is the best policy to be devised for this intricate and important task.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA AND NYASALAND

Mr. D. Foot: asked the Prime Minister whether he discussed with the Ministers of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, during their visit to London, the view of Her Majesty's Government, as stated by the then Lord Chancellor on 27th March, 1962, that as a matter of pure law there is no doubt that the power of the United Kingdom Parliament to legislate how it wishes for the Federation remains unfettered.

Mr. Healey: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his recent meeting with Ministers of the Central African Federation.

The First Secretary of State (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have been asked to reply.
Yes, Sir. As I made clear in the House yesterday, I had useful talks with the Federal Ministers, but we were unable to reach agreement on the terms on which my statement should be made.

Mr. Foot: Arising out of that reply, will the right hon. Gentleman consider publishing a White Paper setting out the nature of the exchanges between himself and the Federal Ministers, and also setting out the assurances or pledges, if pledges there were, given in 1953 which were referred to yesterday both in another place and in Salisbury?

Mr. Butler: The latter question I gather is being raised later. On the farmer question, I would not wish to add to the extent of the publication of confidential documents which has recently taken place. Her Majesty's Government attach particular importance to the fact that when discussions are confidential they should be so treated afterwards.

Mr. Healey: Without raising at this stage the question of the confidential exchanges which took place in 1953, is it not the case that the consultations carried out by Her Majesty's Government in the last few weeks fully implement all the published obligations accepted by Her Majesty's Government in relation to changes in the Constitution of the Central African Federation?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. As far as I can comprehend and understand the hon. Gentleman's question, I should regard that to be so. Her Majesty's Government, as I said yesterday, have the inalienable right to take the action which they have done, and have been acting constitutionally.

Mr. G. Brown: Would it be another way of putting the First Secretary's original Answer to say that the Government believe that when double-talk has taken place it should be kept dark?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. I do not accept either leg of the right hon. Gentleman's statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Mr. D. Foot: asked the Prime Minister if he will publish the recent correspondence between the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and himself regarding economic aid to Trinidad and Tobago.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
No, Sir. It seems best to maintain the practice of regarding communications between Commonwealth Prime Ministers as confidential.

Mr. Foot: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that a White Paper has been published in Trinidad setting out the letters which were sent by the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago to the Prime Minister of this country? In those circumstances, is it not desirable that the replies should be published so that the public in both countries may judge of this matter?

Mr. Butler: We do not think, even after considering the remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman, of which I was aware, that we should be right to depart from our own practice.

Mr. Healey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, though many of us when we first heard that the Prime Minister of Trinidad had rejected Her Majesty's Government's offer of aid felt that his conduct was intemperate, now that we have been able to read the White Paper published by the Trinidad Government and discover that more than £500,000 offered was to be committed against the will of the Trinidad Government to expenditure in which they had no direct national interest, we cannot but feel that Her Majesty's Goverment's offer was so insulting as to justify the response of the Prime Minister of Trinidad?

Mr. Butler: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. We made as generous an offer as we possibly could having regard to our many other commitments. We still remain in friendly relations with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago despite the differences of opinion. I am afraid that I cannot add further to that.

Mr. J. Griffiths: When dealing with Trinidad will the right hon. Gentleman

bear in mind that shortly before Trinidad became independent Her Majesty's Government sold to another country one of its greatest resources, namely, Trinidad Oil?

Mr. Butler: I will bear all those considerations in mind.

Oral Answers to Questions — EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Mr. Ronald Bell: asked the Prime Minister what proposals were made to him, during his recent visit to France, for an association of Great Britain with the Common Market otherwise than through full membership of the Treaty of Rome.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
I cannot add to the joint communiqué issued after the talks.

Mr. Bell: Can my right hon. Friend add to it to the extent of saying whether proposals of this nature have reached the British Government either during these talks or otherwise? Can he give an assurance that if proposals of this character are made they will be warmly welcomed by Her Majesty's Government?

Mr. Butler: The first preoccupation of Her Majesty's Government is to play a full part in the Common Market and not to divert our attention to alternative proposals, but I will undertake that if any proposal of this sort is put to Her Majesty's Government it will receive serious consideration.

Mr. Bell: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that this proposal for a European Free Trade Area was the first choice of Her Majesty's Government and that it was only when this was unhappily frustrated that we turned to the second and obviously less desirable alternative of full membership of the Treaty of Rome.

Mr. Butler: We have to face the situation as created by the Six themselves.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: asked the Prime Minister whether he will now initiate proposals for a Commonwealth initiative on the lines communicated to


him last June by the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East; and if he will make a statement

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
Her Majesty's Government share my right hon. Friend's desire to strengthen Commonwealth ties. They believe that this country's ability to do so will be improved by bringing the Brussels negotiations to a successful conclusion. The prospects of doing that would not be improved by a separate initiative at this stage.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Does my right hon. Friend not agree that I could hardly be charged with overstatement in suggesting that the six months which have elapsed since I communicated these proposals to the Prime Minister have not seen any brightening of the prospects for our entry into the Common Market? Will not he therefore further agree that the national interest and the whole complex of the international situation at present make the initiation of these proposals by this country a matter of imperative urgency?

Mr. Butler: It is quite obvious that the last six months have been taken up in very hard and stiff bargaining, and it is imperative that we should keep our own will in this matter and attempt to get the conditions that we desire to see before entering the Common Market.

Mr. G. Brown: But does not the right hon. Gentleman think that one way in which we might maintain our will and might he helped to get the conditions we require is to be seen to be trying to develop alternative ways in case we fail?

Mr. Butler: While we are concentrating on the negotiations the important thing is to take a constructive view of our chances in those negotiations. The right hon. Gentleman can be quite satisfied that we are ready for any contingency, should it arise.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: But does not my right hon. Friend's approach to this matter contradict the wisdom of the elementary maxim that it is a mistake to put all one's eggs in one basket?

Mr. Butler: We had better see how we get on with the present eggs.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTERS OF UGANDA AND TANGANYIKA (CONSULTATIONS)

Mr. Healey: asked the Prime Minister what reply he has made to the request of the Prime Ministers of Uganda and Tanganyika for consultations in London on certain questions concerning East Africa.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend has decided that, although in general it is right to preserve the confidential character of these exchanges, it would not be wrong, on this occasion, to inform the House that he has welcomed the joint proposal of Mr. Kawawa and Mr. Obote for early talks on certain questions affecting the working of regional co-operation in the area. My right hon. Friend is now in correspondence with them about a mutually convenient date for talks.
Meanwhile, we have learned with regret that Mr. Obote has had to undergo an emergency operation. I am sure the House will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery and in reaffirming the hope that we shall soon be able to welcome him to London.

Mr. Healey: First, may I, on behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends, express our agreement with the wishes for Mr. Obote's rapid recovery, and also welcome the decision of the Prime Minister to meet the Prime Ministers of Uganda and Tanganyika on this question? In view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has now recognised the legitimate interests of the Prime Ministers of Uganda and Tanganyika in the progress of Kenya towards independence, is he yet in a position to say when the Kenya elections will take place, as a necessary first step towards full independence?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. My right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary and I would require notice of that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTH-EAST DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Mr. Short: asked the Prime Minister what reply he has sent to a resolution forwarded to him by the North-East Development Council on 3rd November.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend informed the North-East Development Council that he had noted the terms of the resolution forwarded to him. and my right hon. Friends the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Labour have sent a detailed reply to the points raised in the resolution.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Jewellery (Tax Evasion)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the loss to the revenue through tax frauds by jewellery firms selling as second-hand jewellery which was new; and how much Purchase Tax has now been recovered from these firms.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Edward du Cann): As indicated in paragraph 100 of the Third Report from the Committee of Public Accounts, Session 1961–62, no firm estimate of the loss to the Revenue through these frauds can be given. The answer to the second part of the Question is about £345,000.

Mr. Boyden: This is about £250,000 less than the Public Accounts Committee expected would be recovered. Has the hon. Gentleman been able to take steps to prevent this kind of fraud in other spheres? Obviously he cannot disclose the methods adopted, but has he been able to do anything in a general way?

Mr. du Cann: There is a good deal of money to be recovered, about £250,000 or so. In answer to the second part of his supplementary question, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the situation is being carefully and closely watched.

CENTRAL AFRICA

Mr. Healey: (by Private Notice) asked the First Secretary of State, as the Minister responsible for Central African affairs, if he will lay on the Table a full account of the confidential and hitherto unpublished exchanges which took place in 1953 concerning the Central African Federation.

The First Secretary of State (Mr. R. A. Butler): It is important to respect the confidential character of documents and Her Majesty's Government must also consider the position of the other parties concerned.

Mr. Healey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we regard this as a very serious matter? Is he aware that if the allegations made by the Federal Prime Minister in Central Africa are true—they were confirmed in another place by three ex-Ministers concerned—it is not only a heavy blow to Britain's reputation for honesty in world affairs, in illustrating the deplorable collapse in the standards of Government which has taken place during the last ten years, but it also raises a matter of direct concern to this House; because would not it appear that the Ministers renounced the power of legislation, which two Lord Chancellors have said is vested exclusively in the United Kingdom Parliament, without telling the British Parliament about it?
Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that many of us still feel that the conduct of the noble Lords who concealed these pledges from the British Parliament and people is as furtive and dishonourable as that of the right hon. Gentlemen who broke the pledges?

Mr. Butler: I cannot give any further answer to the long and carefully prepared question of the hon. Gentleman. I am asked whether I will publish or not and I have said that consideration has to be given to the parties concerned and to the confidential nature of what was a conference attended by a variety of Governments. That I will do, but I cannot take the matter further today. The only remark I can make in answer to the hon. Gentleman's generalisations is that what I stated yesterday is the absolute truth, that Great Britain has the inalienable right to act in these matters.

Mr. Healey: Is it not the case, according to statements by Her Majesty's Government's ex-Ministers in another place and by the Federal Prime Minister of the Central African Federation, that Her Majesty's Ministers renounced this right in secret without telling the British Parliament and people about it at the beginning of 1953? Is


it not also the case that verbatim accounts of these exchanges have already been published in Salisbury, and is it not the duty of the Government to the British people, and to the world, to clear up this matter, and, if the allegations as stated are true, to resign?

Mr. Butler: I answered this matter quite clearly in a short supplementary answer yesterday and it was answered at length by the Lord Chancellor in another place yesterday. I do not propose to go into the merits or the demerits of this question, but simply to confine myself to answering the question about publication which, as I say, needs consideration.

Mr. J. Griffiths: As one who took a considerable part in the earlier discussions on this matter, may I ask the First Secretary whether he will tell the House that no pledge of any kind was given to those who represented the Europeans at this conference on Central Africa?

Mr. Butler: I cannot go into the merits or the demerits of this question in answering supplementary questions on the question of publication. I dealt with the matter yesterday and my answer, I think, bears examination and will be found to be correct.

Mr. Griffiths: I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman to go into details. It is a matter of the publication of documents, and that is another question. I am asking—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are getting into collision with order for the reason that more than once the right hon. Gentleman has declined to go beyond, or he is declining to answer questions going beyond, the question of publication. That means a refusal to answer about other matters, and another question on the same lines would now be out of order. That is the difficulty.

Mr. Griffiths: Surely there are two things which we wish to know. The first is the question whether the documents, which are confidential, should be published or not. That is one matter. There is the other matter—since we are adjourning at the end of this week—which is that, in view of the statements which have

been made to the effect that pledges were given, will the First Secretary confirm or deny that pledges were given?

Mr. Butler: I am not prepared to carry the matter any further today. I am prepared only to consider the question put to me about publication.

Mr. Gordon Walker: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it very unfortunate that hon. Members should have to read the HANSARD of the Southern Rhodesia or Federal Parliament in order to discover documents to which this Government were a party and which this Government will not publish so that we might be able to see them here, in our own publication?

Mr. Butler: I expressed earlier my regret, and that of Her Majesty's Government, that confidential documents and exchanges should have been published by one party when, as I said in my Answer, there were several parties to this conference. I do not think that publication should be made of documents to which several parties adhered without considering their position.

Mr. M. Foot: Charges have been made in Salisbury which involved the personal honour of a series of Ministers and the honour of this Government as a whole. Is not it most remarkable that the First Secretary is not able to deny these charges? Does he plead guilty or not guilty to the accusations? How does he say that this matter is to be resolved? It cannot be left like this.

Mr. Butler: As I have said, consideration is being given to the request of the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). But I am not prepared to take the matter any further today.

Mr. D. Foot: Will the right hon. Gentleman specify precisely who are the parties who need to be consulted before publication and what steps he is taking to obtain their consent?

Mr. Butler: I have said that I must consider the position of the parties to the conference, which involves more than one Government, including this Government, and that I will do.

Mr. Gordon Walker: Will the right hon. Gentleman simply say whether the allegations made by Sir Roy Welensky are true or false?

Mr. Butler: I am not prepared to take the matter further than answering the Private Notice Question. If matters of faith or good faith arise, I would refer to my Answer given yesterday, which clearly shows that Britain has a right to do this, and clearly explains the reason why, in default of agreement with the Federal Government, it was impossible for Great Britain to take any other honourable action in regard to Nyasaland than the action which I took as Secretary of State.

Mr. Healey: In view of the very great public concern about these allegations, which, after all, are statements made not only by the Federal Prime Minister, but by very distinguished ex-Ministers of Her Majesty's Government in another place, can the right hon. Gentleman at least assure us that he will make a statement in the House, before we rise for the Christmas Recess, informing the House whether or not these pledges were made?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. I am not prepared to make any further statement until I have given consideration to the request which has been made. That is bound to take a little time. It cannot be made before the House rises.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is a real difficulty about this, because the Minister has indicated very clearly that he will not go further today and we have no Question before the House.

Mr. G. Brown: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I will allow one more question.

Mr. Brown: May I remind the right hon. Gentleman, so that he may take it into consideration, that were he to return to the House immediately after the Recess and be unable to go further than he has gone today—the situation cannot be left as it is—he must realise that he will present us with only one course, that we should have to put down a Motion which he would have to answer?

Mr. Butler: Naturally, I accept any observation made by the right hon. Gentleman. But I cannot be pushed or rushed into the consideration which I must give to this important matter. As

I have said, I am giving consideration to it, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that statement.

Mr. J. Griffiths: May I put this for your consideration, Mr. Speaker? Documents at a conference in which representatives of Her Majesty's Government and other Governments have taken part have been quoted in a Parliament outside this country. If they were quoted in this Parliament I think that the rule would be that they would have to be laid on the Table of this House. May I take it that the rule applies to documents which affect and are associated with Her Majesty's Government, but which have been referred to in another Parliament?

Mr. Speaker: The answer to the right hon. Gentleman's question is, no. Mr. Brown. Business question.

Mr. W. Yates: I have given notice, Mr. Speaker that I wish to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House.

Mr. Speaker: Yes. I will allow the hon. Member an opportunity when we reach the right point.

PRIVATE NOTICE QUESTION (13th DECEMBER, 1962)

Mr. G. Brown: Before we reach the business of the House, Mr. Speaker, I want to raise the matter of a Private Notice Question. Have you any information to give the House about the form in which a Private Notice Question which was submitted to and accepted by you, from my right hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) on Thursday, 13th December, was not the same as that which the Prime Minister said that he had received?

Mr. Speaker: I can speak only for myself and my office. The Question which I allowed and which was communicated to the Ministry of Defence, that was the first Department then involved, was the Question asked by the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker). I do not know whether the First Secretary can help about the rest of this matter.

The First Secretary of State (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have had some consultations about this and I should like to say that


the Prime Minister would wish me to say that, although the form of the Question given to the Government was, as my right hon. Friend said, more general than that which was asked by the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker), this was not due to any act of omission on the part of the right hon. Member nor, of course, of your office, Mr. Speaker. The comment on the Question was made in good faith, but, naturally, the Prime Minister regrets the circumstances which gave rise to it.

Mr. G. Brown: May I press the First Secretary? Those of us who were here will remember that the Prime Minister made a very great show in an attempt at denigration of my right hon. Friend to the point of, first, sitting down and declining to go on with the Question, and, when pressed, said, as reported in column 580 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of that day, that he had received notice of a more general Question and proposed to make a more general Answer.
The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to answer a Question which, in fact, my right hon. Friend had not put. If, as I understand it, the breakdown was an administrative one somewhere in the Departments for which the Prime Minister is responsible, is not the House and my right hon. Friend personally entitled to a much mare generous apology than has been made, and an attempt to find how and why this happened?

Mr. Butler: I have already generously acknowledged that absolutely no fault lies at the door of the right hon. Member for Smethwick.

Mr. Lipton: Whose fault was it?

Mr. Butler: I have also acknowledged that no fault is in your office, Mr. Speaker. So far as I can find there was an error of a typographical character in transmitting the Question to the Prime Minister, who received it in a different sense. I should like to express the regret of the Prime Minister that this should have been so and to apologise to the House as it is entirely in our own sphere that a mistake was made.

Mr. Gordon Walker: Naturally, I accept the apology that the right hon. Gentleman has made, although I would have preferred an apology for the way

in which the Prime Minister behaved on that occasion. I should like to make that clear.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. G. Brown: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for the first week after the Adjournment?

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. fain Macleod): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the Adjournment will be as follows:
TUESDAY 22ND JANUARY.—SecOnd Reading of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill [Lords], and Committee stage of the Money Resolution.
Remaining stages of the Commonwealth Scholarships (Amendment) Bill, and the County Courts (Jurisdiction) Bill, and of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Bill [Lords], and the Betting Duties Bill [Lords], which are consolidation Measures.
WEDNESDAY, 23RD JANUARY, and THURSDAY, 24TH JANUARY.—Committee stage of Clause 1 and the First Schedule of the London Government Bill.
At the end of business on Thursday, consideration of the Motion on the Anti-Dumping Duty (No. 3) Order.
FRIDAY, 25TH JANUARY.—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.

Mr. Brown: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is the intention of the Government to provide an early opportunity for the House to discuss the Report of the Joint Select Committee on House of Lords Reform? Will the Government give some indication of their own intentions in this matter?

Mr. Macleod: On a matter of that importance there would be a Government statement and an opportunity for the House to discuss it. I shall not go into details about time, but the assurance is firm.

Mr. Brown: Have the Government considered the White Paper on Broadcasting, Cmnd. 1893? If so, will they give the House an opportunity to debate that White Paper before we proceed to the legislation which the Government are proposing?

Mr. Macleod: I shall be ready to discuss that through the usual channels. Notice of the Bill has been given today and the Bill will be in the hands of the House before we rise for the Christmas Recess, so hon. Members will have both the Bill and the White Paper. I should have thought that it might be convenient to have the discussion on the Second Reading of the Bill, but I should be ready to discuss that point.

Mr. Shinwell: How are hon. Members to be informed about the result of the conversations between the Prime Minister and President Kennedy on a variety of matters including Skybolt, the Congo, and the rest? Are we to be informed by the Press or television, or are we to wait until we come back after the Recess?

Mr. Macleod: Obviously, I cannot say —because this is a matter for those who are taking part in these talks—whether there will or will not be a communiqué. If there is an extended cornmuniqué, if the House wishes we could no doubt lay it in the form of a White Paper.

Mr. Shinwell: Surely the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the conversations now taking place in the Bahamas are of a very serious character, affecting the defence organisation of this country and a variety of other matters. Surely we cannot be expected to wait until 22nd January before expressing an opinion on the communiqué, or what appears in the Press, as a result of the negotiations.

Mr. Macleod: Naturally, they are discussions of the very highest importance, but the right hon. Member, with his experience, will know that it is certainly not unprecedented for discussions of this nature to take place during a Recess and for there usually to be a communiqué and for the House, if it wishes, to return to these matters later. However, I shall consider what he has said today.

Mr. Dugdale: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that no secret pledges will be given by the Prime Minister to President Kennedy such as apparently have been given the Government of Rhodesia?

Mr. Ede: The Leader of the House said that he would give two days, in

the week when we come back, to the Committee stage of the London Government Bill. In view of the wide and detailed discussions that must take place, does he expect to get Clause 1 and the First Schedule in Committee of the whole House in those two days?

Mr. Macleod: The right hon. Member has been Leader of the House. There is no harm in hoping, is there?

Mr. Lipton: Would the Leader of the House agree to be a little more specific about the business he has announced for Friday, 25th January? Would he agree to announce that the first and most important business that day will be the Widows' Pensions Bill, which I am introducing with a view to abolishing the earnings rule for widows and to doubling the pension for the 10s. widows?

Mr. Albu: In view of the alarming figures published today about the fall in industrial production and the rise in unemployment, which make complete nonsense of the Government's thesis that the rise in unemployment was due to a rise in productivity, and, in fact, show that it is due to lack of economic expansion, will the Leader of the House assure us that he will, if necessary, by application to Mr. Speaker, have the House recalled to give the Government adequate powers to deal with the increasingly serious situation?

Mr. Macleod: The hon. Member knows that I gave an assurance to the House yesterday that under Standing Order No. 112 there are provisions by which, in certain circumstances, the House can be recalled.

Mr. Reynolds: On Tuesday afternoon, a document called, "Social Changes in Britain", suddenly saw the light of day and, if the by-lines in newspapers are to be believed, it was not sent to the newspapers in the proper way, but was dished out to members of the Press who are accredited to this House. It has now been possible for me to obtain a copy of this document, which has no imprint or any indication to show that it comes from any Government Department—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) be good enough to relate his question to business?

Mr. Reynolds: Certainly, Mr. Speaker. I was merely giving the background first.
Since the Minister without Portfolio has now refused to publish this paper for general consumption, so that members of the public can read only those parts of it which the Press is generous enough to print, does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the only way in which we can ensure that this paper gets sufficient criticism as one of the most biased documents produced in recent years is to have a debate in the near future on the document itself?

Mr. Macleod: I wondered how the hon. Gentleman would relate his question to the business for the first week after the Recess. I cannot see an opportunity for such a debate in that week.

Mr. Stonehouse: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen a Motion on the Congo—
[That this House, whilst recognising the desirability of all the Congo Territories remaining united, but convinced that the principle of self-determination enshrined in the Charter must be upheld, requests Her Majesty's Government to take an immediate initiative in the United Nations Security Council to prevent the imposition in any part of the Congo of a political solution by the use of force or economic coercion.]
which has been put on the Order Paper by some of his hon. Friends, and the Amendment—
[Line 1, leave out from "recognising", to end, and add "regrets the continued separation of the province of Katanga from the rest of the Congo, condemns the efforts of financial, industrial and outside political pressure groups to perpetuate the divisions in the Congo and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to give full support to the United Nations in the implementation of the resolution adopted by the Security Council on 21st February, 1961, towards the reunification of the Congo by all appropriate measures".]
which is supported by hon. Members on this side of the House? If so, will he arrange for a debate on the subject when we return from the Recess?

Mr. Macleod: We will have to see what the position is then. In my short

speech yesterday, I dealt with the Government's attitude towards the new position which has arisen in the Congo.

BRUNEI

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Nigel Fisher): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I would like to make a statement on Brunei in accordance with my right hon. Friend's promise on 10th December to keep the House informed of further developments there.
Thanks to the prompt arrival in Brunei in response to the Brunei Government's own request, under their agreement with us of military and police reinforcements, I am glad to say that the rebels' attempted coup has already been frustrated, organised resistance has ceased and order has been largely re-established. A sufficient security force is now in the territory to deal with remaining rebel pockets.
Immediate reinforcements were on the spot very quickly indeed. A police contingent from North Borneo was in Brunei within a few hours of the outbreak of violence at 2 a.m. on the morning of the 8th December and British forces from Singapore left by air about 12 hours after the outbreak. All major centres, both in Brunei and in the affected area of Sarawak, have been cleared, and life is returning to normal in the towns and villages. Rebel activity is now virtually confined to certain rural areas. The oil installations at Seria are undamaged, and all hostages throughout the area have been released.
There are no British prisoners in rebel hands. British Service casualties are seven killed and 28 wounded. Final information about police casualties is not yet available, but there were some killed and wounded. At least two civilians were killed and seven wounded. Definite information about rebel casualties is not yet available, but it is estimated that between 50 and 60 have been killed and 600 to 700 taken prisoner.
Reports so far received show that the Brunei State police put up stout, and, in some cases, highly successful, resistance to the attacks on Government buildings.
Since the rebellion in Brunei spilled over into sonic adjacent areas of North Borneo and Sarawak it is obviously essential to secure the efficient coordination of civil and military measures in all the three territories. With the approval of the Governments concerned, Major General W. C. Walker has been appointed Director of Operations and Commander of British Forces in Borneo. The Commissioner General, Lord Selkirk, and the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, are also in the closest touch with the situation.
I should like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to the work of the security forces, both Services and police. I am sure that the House would wish to join me in extending our sympathy to the relatives of those who have lost their lives, and to those who were wounded.

Mr. Healey: May I join, on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, in the expressions of sympathy in respect of the casualties in the fighting?
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of us are disturbed by the evidence of the scale and extent of the rising which, according to the Resident Commissioner, came as a complete surprise to the local British authorities? I notice that the hon. Gentleman now says that we have captured four times as many people as the original estimate of the size of the rebel forces.
Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House, first, how long he expects British forces to be tied up in Brunei, and, secondly, what political and other steps are being taken by Her Majesty's Government to try to restore confidence in Her Majesty's Government among that large section of the population which appears to have participated in the revolt?

Mr. Fisher: I do not think that I could put any time limit on the operations. They will be rather difficult and may be prolonged, for they involve the clearing up of pockets of resistance in jungle areas.
The hon. Member says that we were caught unprepared, but in these areas it is very difficult to get accurate intelligence much in advance. We had been told so often that there was to be trouble, which never materialised;

"wolf" was being cried so often that it was somewhat discounted. Hon. Members will have appreciated that we were not unready. Our forces were there quickly and did an extremely good job. They arrived at virtually 12 hours' notice. I cannot remember the hon. Gentleman's second question.

Mr. Healey: Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House what political or other steps Her Majesty's Government have in mind to restore confidence in Her Majesty's Government among the sizeable section of the population of Brunei which seems to have lost confidence in the last few months?

Mr. Fisher: I do not think that there is any loss of confidence, except among the rebel elements. The question of Brunei joining Malaysia, if that is what the hon. Gentleman has in mind, is entirely a matter for Brunei, but we are in close touch with the Sultan on the civil side of the administration, and I do not believe that there is any loss of confidence in the British Government.

Mr. B. Harrison: In view of the reported statements by President Soekarno, can my hon. Friend say whether there is any definite connection between this revolt and support from Indonesia? If there is, will he draw President Soekarno's attention to the fact that we are endeavouring to give self-government to the area and not to extend colonialism, as Indonesia is trying to do in West Irian?

Mr. Fisher: As my right hon. Friend said last week, there are indications, although they are not yet confirmed, that the rebel forces received a certain amount of military training outside the country. We have noted with concern the expressions of sympathy with the rebels which have been made by Indonesian leaders. They seem to have been based on a mistaken view of the nature and purposes of Mr. Azahari's attempted coup, which seems to have been regarded as a sort of anti-colonial uprising, which it certainly was not.
Her Majesty's Government have already asked the Indonesian Government for certain assurances, and we are awaiting their reply. I do not think that we have yet taken up with the Indonesian Government the broadcast which was made only yesterday by Mr. Soekarno.

Mr. Paget: Is the hon. Gentleman satisfied with the co-ordination between military and civil intelligence, which apparentliy resulted in our being taken rather seriously by surprise? Also, when can we expect a full statement as to the military operations and the military lessons to be drawn from them?

Mr. Fisher: I do not think that we were taken seriously by surprise. As a matter of fact, the Tunku saw Lord Selkirk and expressed some concern about the situation in Brunei on 2nd December, and Lord Selkirk immediately visited North Borneo and Sarawak and Brunei. Security forces in Singapore had been reviewed by the Commander-in-Chief on 7th December and that they were at 12 hours' notice has now been proved. There is no substance in the charge that we were taken by surprise.

Mr. Paget: Can we have an interim statement?

Mr. Fisher: The hon. Gentleman can have a sort of interim military statement, if he likes, now. There are considerable bands of rebels and their associates, particularly south of Miri and there are rebels in the Temburong district, which is the other remaining centre of rebel activity, and they appear to be moving southward. That is the tactical situation on the ground. I do not know what else the hon. and learned Member has in mind.

Mr. Paget: What we want is the operational report which is normal on these occasions—the report on the operation from the military point of view, and the lessons to be drawn from it. When may we expect it?

Mr. Fisher: I will certainly draw the point to the attention of my right hon. Friend, but I doubt whether there will be any opportunity of making any further statement on this subject until the House reassembles.

Sir J. Smyth: May I ask my hon. Friend whether he will consult his right hon. Friends about a message of appreciation being sent to the Government of Nepal saying how much we value the excellent services of the 1/2 Gurkha Rifles and their prompt arrival on the scene of the disturbances? Would he also see that the sympathy of the

House, which has been expressed with regard to the casualties, is also extended to the families of the Gurkhas in Nepal, which, like other families, watch and hope when their men are in action?

Mr. Fisher: Yes, Sir. I will certainly take the opportunity of sending a message both of thanks and appreciation for their services and also of sympathy to the families of those who lost their lives, in the sense which my hon. Friend suggests.
I should perhaps, say, since the point has arisen, that the Australian and New Zealand Governments have also been helpful, and made transport aircraft available, and that the Government of the Federation of Malaya have contributed a police unit, at the Sultan's request, to supplement the Brunei police.

YEMEN

Mr. W. Yates: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely,
in view of the rising of the House for the Christmas Recess tomorrow, and the announcement by our ally the United States, yesterday, to recognise the Republic of the Yemen after the Minister's statement to the House, the urgent need for Her Majesty's Government to reconsider that statement and to make a new decision concerning the recognition of the Government of the Yemen, bearing in mind the British commercial and security interests in South Yemen, Aden and South-West Arabia.
In seeking your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, I am asking the House whether it will give leave to consider this as a matter of both urgent and definite public importance, bearing in mind that there is an extra hour for the main debate tonight.
Nothing in the world could have been more definite than the Minister's refusal at that Box yesterday to recognise the new Government of the Yemen.
As to urgency, it can, of course, be argued that the Minister may make a statement later today, or tomorrow morning, or, with your permission, Sir, when he thinks fit; but I have had the good fortune, I must tell the House, of speaking with the Minister concerned, and he


tells me that he will not make a statement today, nor will he seek your permission to make a statement tomorrow. Therefore, that is the position, and I accept it as a fact.
The urgency, I should think, lies in the fact that a complete new set of circumstances has now arisen, because yesterday we were faced with a different set of problems, and the recognition of the Yemen by our great ally the United States is certainly an important matter, because our own Government have been involved very closely in these negotiations themselves. I suggest that these matters are of paramount importance to the House, and cannot be left out of the urgency of the discussion.
The urgency of the matter lies in the fact that the Government of the United States—and the new Yemen Government—have apparently 'obtained authority for the reconfirmation of the Treaty of Sanaa, concluded by our own Government in 1934. That Treaty is an important one, because it regulates the boundaries between the Yemen and the British Protectorates in South-West Arabia.
The United States was also actually in consultation with our own Government, and has obtained what appeared to me to be promises and assurances for the withdrawal of U.A.R. forces, under agreement, from the Yemen. If these statements are true—and I have no doubt they are, because I have confirmed them myself from the proper authorities—I suggest that here we are faced with a matter of urgent public importance namely, the conflict of views between the United States Government and Her Majesty's Government in an area in Which we both have vital interests, substantial interests in oil and in the security of Aden and the Persian Gulf.
I will not detain the House further on this important matter now, but it occurs to me that the Prime Minister is having discussions with the President of the United States. One cannot deny that this matter is both definite and urgent and of public importance, and I therefore submit that perhaps you, Mr. Speaker, may think it one on which you might like to obtain the view of the House.

Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Gentleman be kind enough to bring me his Motion?

Copy of Motion handed in.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely,
in view of the rising of the House for the Christmas Recess tomorrow, and the announcement by our ally the United States, yesterday, to recognise the Republic of the Yemen after the Minister's statement to the House, the urgent need for Her Majesty's Government to reconsider that statement and to make a new decision concerning the recognition of the Government of the Yemen, bearing in mind the British commercial and security interests in South Yemen, Aden and South-West Arabia".
I do not think that it is within my power to leave that matter to the House. I do not think that it conics within the Standing Order.

Mr. Yates: I do not understand this matter. Standing Order No. 9 puts both you, Mr. Speaker, and the Member concerned into great difficulties if you cannot, as on the last occasion, give some guidance to hon. Members on how this does not come within Standing Order No. 9.
In view of the submissions which I have made, it is definite; indeed, nothing could be more definite that the Minister's statement yesterday, and what we seek to do is to vary or 'halt an executive decision of the Government. If there were another two or three days to go, there would be plenty of time for us to ask the Government to vary an executive decision, but the Government have already made it clear to me that they are disinclined to vary the decision, and, in view of the rising of the House tomorrow, I submit that to move this Motion under Standing Order No. 9 is the only way in which hon. Members can obtain redress from the Government before the House rises.
That is absolutely definite. The definite statement yesterday was "No", and then new circumstances completely altered the situation, and make this a matter which the Government might like to reconsider.

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, there must be some limit to this, because I have the interests of the House as a whole to consider. The first


basis of the Ruling, from which I in no way depart, is that failure to recognise is a continuing matter which has been continuing ever since some time in September. It is a matter, for instance, which the hon. Gentleman could have raised yesterday. The mere fact that the United States Government have recognised since the statement yesterday adds precisely nothing, because yesterday the hon. Gentleman was told that Her Majesty's Government did not regard the expected recognition by the United States as a matter for consideration by them in the sense that they desired to reserve a decision about recognition to themselves. I am not allowed, under the Standing Order, to leave that which is a continuing matter.

Mr. Yates: Mr. Speaker, I must say—

Mr. Speaker: I am very sorry, but I must ask the House to take my Ruling.

Mr. Yates: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. With great and sincere regret, I must say that I must put down a Motion dissenting from your Ruling under these special circumstances.

BILL PRESENTED

TELEVISION

Bill to extend the period for which the Independent Television Authority are to provide television services, to make further provision with respect to the control exercisable by the Authority over the programmes broadcast by them and over programme contractors, to require payments from programme contractors reflecting the value of the public concessions enjoyed by them, and to amend in other respects the law relating to the Authority and broadcasting by the Authority, including relations between the Authority and the British Broadcasting Corporation, presented by Mr. Reginald Bevins; supported by Mr. R. A. Butler, Mr. Anthony Barber, and Miss Mervyn Pike; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 54.]

BRITISH MUSEUM BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

4.12 p.m.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster-General (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The British Museum, as the House knows, is the oldest and perhaps the greatest of our major national cultural institutions, and a Bill to modernise its legal basis is obviously a significant and important step. The age of the Museum itself has meant that its legal foundations are tied up in a great mass of largely archaic legislation. Indeed, if the House cares to glance at the Fourth Schedule to the Bill, dealing with repeals, it will see that, among other things, the Bill proposes to repeal in toto no fewer than 16 statutes, two of them going back to the eighteenth century.
This is, as the House, I am sure, knows well, a very great institution which has been served for many years by men of the utmost distinction, and contains some of the greatest treasures which human mind and hand have created. It therefore will, I am sure, seem to the House worth taking some care to give it a legal structure and foundation which should enable it to play the part it should in the life both of the nation and the world in the second half of the twentieth century—and it is only this House that can revise this legal structure.
I think that it was perhaps a misunderstanding of this which prompted a leading article in The Times today. I think, with respect, that that article does not give full weight to the fact that the law governing the subject is a matter for Parliament and that it really is impossible for the kind of thoughts and projects which lie behind that article to be considered or carried out unless the legal foundation, which is the business of Parliament, is put right. I certainly would not wish, in seeking to deal with this legal foundation, to exclude any ideas or thoughts that anyone may wish to give to the further development of the museum, but it is necessary for four particular reasons, which I want to submit to the House, to get the legal foundation right.
There are four important matters with which only legislation can deal. The first concerns the British Museum library. This is one of the greatest libraries in the world, and it is almost literally bursting at its seams with the vast mass of printed matter that pours into it every year. Under the present law, it is possible, apart from the newspaper repository at Colindale, to store these only in the Bloomsbury building.
As the House knows, it has been proposed for some years to erect a new library building on a site adjoining the museum —I will go into that in greater detail in a moment—but it would not be legally possible to proceed with that site for use for the books of the library under the present law. It is necessary to obtain legal powers to use that building, when constructed, as a library. I am sure that the House will feel that it would be wrong to proceed with the construction or this great enterprise unless one proceeded on the basis that Parliament had approved its use, when completed, for the purpose for which it was built.
Secondly. there is the constitution of the trustee body. I will enlarge on that in a moment. It is very large. Its basis is archaic, and I am sure that it is desirable in the interests of the museum to place it on an up-to-date and defensible basis. Thirdly, the legal power either to lend the Museum's contents for exhibition or to dispose of its property is highly restricted, highly complicated and spread over a whole number of statutes. Fourthly, there is the fact that for many years now the Natural History Museum, at South Kensington, with its out-station at Tring, has been, in effect, a separate institution with a separate director and dealing with a different set of topics, and it really seems desirable to give it a separate legal entity and, perhaps even more important, a separate body of trustees.
It is not surprising that so ancient an institution is now hedged about with out-of-date statutory restrictions, for it was created in very different circumstances. The House may be amused to know, by way of illustration, that one of the major sources of finance for the starting of the museum in the eighteenth century was a lottery organised by the then Archbishop of Canterbury. It was

highly successful—it raised £95,000—but it was not wholly free from scandal, and at least one of the agents is alleged to have made a corner in the tickets. In those remote days, even the trustee body itself, which was very different from the present very distinguished body, was under severe criticism.
The House may be interested to recall a critic of 1830, who said:
Among those trustees who are elected by the others, and who it might be supposed would be chosen in consequence of their reputation, there is not one person who is distinguished for his attainments in science, in art or in literature as manifested in his work; but they consist of one duke, three marquesses, five earls, four barons and two Members of Parliament.
That was a very long time ago. That was said of a body which shortly afterwards included Henry Hallam, Sir John Herschel and T. B. Macaulay.
The Museum has certainly been most fortunate in recent years to be served with great distinction by a number of very able men, some of whom have taken part most helpfully in the discussions leading up to the Bill. Though it is invidious, of course, to specify particular individuals for the help and counsel that they have given us, I should like to express the gratitude of the Government, and, I hope and believe, of the House, to the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Fisher of Lambeth, the noble Lord, Lord Cambridge, the noble Lord, Lord Crawford, the noble Lord, Lord Radcliffe, Sir Henry Dale, and, last but by no manner of means least, the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), whom I am particularly glad to see in his place this afternoon.
I come to the four major matters requiring legislation which I outlined a moment ago, and I will take them in the same order. Under the present law the collections can be housed for exhibition only in what are described as "authorised repositories", which are themselves defined by Statute. For practical purposes that means the main museum building in Bloomsbury, the newspaper library at Colindale, the Natural History Museum at South Kensington and the out-station at Tring.
Clauses 3 and 9 of the Bill make provision for these authorised repositories —that is, places where articles can be


exhibited—to be increased by the designation of other places by Treasury Order, made by agreement with the trustees, laid before Parliament and subject to the negative procedure. If the House approves the Bill, it would be intended to make such an Order in respect of the library site, to which I have referred, and perhaps I may say a word about that.
Under the County of London Development Plan, the property bounded by Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury Square, Bloomsbury Way, North Oxford Street and Bloomsbury Street, with the exception of St. George's Church, was designated for this purpose following a public inquiry in 1955. It may well be that not the whole of that land will be needed for the purpose, but my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works has already acquired some of the land and will continue with that acquisition.
This summer, two very distinguished architects, Sir Leslie Martin and Mr. Colin St. John Wilson, have been appointed consultant architects to produce a plan for the building which will enable us to know with greater precision precisely which land will be required. The plan will be prepared, and it is hoped that the first stage of the building, which will proceed by stages, will begin in 1965.
The idea is that when the building is completed the whole of the library departments at present at Bloomsbury, with the possible exception of some of the special collections like the King's Library, will be moved over into the new library building. This will have the further advantage of making more space available in the Bloomsbury building, itself very overcrowded, for other departments of the museum. The first step in this procedure must be obtaining the authority of Parliament for the use as a library of a site outside the existing authorised repositories.
There is another use which it is intended will be made of the power to designate authorised repositories. It is intended that the National Science Reference Library, which will be a part of the museum, will be built on the South Bank in buildings to be shared with the new Patent Office and, indeed, that it should include the existing Patent Office

library. That would be administered as part of the British Museum. It is hoped that work will start on that next year and that the Science Reference Library would start functioning not later than 1966.
I come to the composition of the trustee body. I do so with some timidity because you, Mr. Speaker, are one of the principal trustees and are affected by the Bill. I must say at once that like so many institutions in this country, the trustee body functions in practice very much better than anyone looking at it on paper would think possible. It does so, largely, I think, because of the wholly non-statutory development of the system of the Standing Committee, which carries out a great deal of the day-to-day control of the Museum. None the less, the present body is, I think, by modern standards too large. It contains a very large number of ex-officio trustees who are people, almost as a matter of definition, with other preoccupations and commitments.
It seems highly desirable to bring this composition up to date and to put the museum body of trustees on the same sort of basis as that of other major national institutions. The present trustee body comprises no fewer than 51 people. There are the three principal trustees—the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and you yourself, Mr. Speaker. There are 23 ex-officio trustees who include a large number of my right hon. Friends and such officers as the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Bishop of London, the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls.
There is one trustee appointed by the Sovereign and there are the so-called family trustees, numbering nine, who are nominated by the heads of six families who were associated with gifts or sale of large collections to the museum in its early days. In addition, there are the 15 so-called elected trustees who are, in fact, trustees co-opted by the rest of the trustee body—51 in all.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: How many of the trustees constitute the Standing Committee and who are they?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think—speaking from memory—that the number


operating on the Standing Committee is about 20. The Economic Secretary will seek to catch your eye at the end of the debate, Mr. Speaker, and he will give that figure. If the House desires I am sure that he will give the list, but I certainly would not attempt to do that "off the cuff."
The Bill proposes that instead of these 51 trustees the British Museum shall have a trustee body of 25. One will be the Sovereign's trustee, whom it is proposed to continue, and 15 would be appointed by the Prime Minister on the same basis as that of other national institutions. There would be four to be nominated by learned bodies, largely on the same basis, but with some adjustment, and on representations made to me very strongly by a number of the present trustees, there would be five to be co-opted by the trustee body, making a body of 25 in all. I cannot help thinking that that is an arrangement which is not only more efficient in itself, but is probably more in accordance with present-day ideas.
One cannot help—certainly, I cannot —feeling some regret when changes of this sort are made, involving a break in very long-standing traditions, even though those traditions originated in very different times. I have, however, consulted a large number of the people concerned and the House may be interested and not surprised to know that many of the ex-officio trustees have indicated their relief at the possibility of being relieved of important duties which they lack the time to discharge as fully as they would like.
We have given special consideration to the position of the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishops of Canterbury have been associated with the museum since 1753 and in recent years have generally presided over the Standing Committee. They are the senior of the principal trustees. We therefore had consultations with the present Archbishop, and he suggested to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that there should be an understanding that, should future Archbishops desire to be trustees, the Prime Minister should be ready to give favourable consideration when a vacancy arose. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has told the Archbishop that, while he cannot bind his successors, he would for

his part readily fall in with the suggestion for dealing with the matter informally in this way.
We have also given anxious consideration to the position of the family trustees —that is to say, the trustees nominated, as I mentioned, by the heads of the six families which contributed so much in the earlier days of the Museum. As the House knows, they are also very eminent people, including, I am glad to say, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. R. Thompson). Their forebears made very great contributions to the Museum, perhaps the most conspicuous, at any rate the best known, being the Elgin Marbles, which we owe to the Lord Elgin of the day.
On the other hand, in this day and age, appointment on this basis by particular families to the trusteeship of a great national institution, the contents of which have so vastly expanded since those days, leads to considerable difficulties and, indeed, the mere passage of time adds to them. In the case of one of the families entitled to nominate, we are at the moment, and have been without success for some months, trying to trace the person who would be entitled to nominate. I am bound to admit to the House that there is a vacancy there. We therefore came to the conclusion, with considerable reluctance, that the right thing when we were reorganising the trustee body and placing it on a modern basis was to bring this arrangement to an end.

Mr. Eric Fletcher: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the body of trustees as newly constituted will be able to appoint their own chairman?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is the intention, yes. I have taken advantage of the breathing space the hon. Gentleman gave me to enable me to answer the question the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) asked me about the numbers on the Standing Committee. My answer, "off the cuff", of 20, was, by happy coincidence, right.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: It is right that the system by which the families to which my right hon. Friend referred, which gave the great collections in the past, have retained the right to nominate down to


the present time should go. However, let us not forget the important American position. If, in the future, somebody were to give a great collection to the British Museum, it is right that there should be a note on the file somewhere that such a person and perhaps his successor would be able to have one of the Prime Minister's nominations so as to serve as a trustee of the British Museum. All the great collections in America—the Frick and Mellon collection, and all those in Washington—have come from very rich people who wanted to become great patrons of the arts. We do not want to stop such people being attracted to this country if we can possibly avoid it.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: My hon. Friend's suggestion is now in a better position than being a note on a file. It is now on the records of the House and is duly recorded should that very happy contingency of such an offer arise.
The third point was the powers of the trustees in connection with lending and disposal. I am advised that the present position is that the trustees have no power to lend for exhibition abroad. The House may remember that earlier this year it was for that reason necessary to put a special Act through Parliament authorising the trustees to lend a few items to the Council of Europe Exhibition at Vienna.
The Bill gives the trustees power to lend abroad on the same basis as at home and tidies up the lending power at home spread over a number of statutes. It is subject, as the House will see, to the proviso to Clause 4 as to what the trustees shall have regard to in connection with the making of these loans. The House may know that the view has been expressed—indeed, it was expressed at one time by some of the trustees—that lending powers of this kind were rather dangerous in that the trustee body might be exposed to pressure by the Government of the day to make loans for purposes of broad Government policy which the trustees might not wish to make. I hope that the House will feel that, whether that fear had reality or not. there is protection to the trustees in the words of the proviso against any undue pressure that

any Government might desire to exercise.
There is then the power of disposal, which is at present scattered in a number of the statutes which it is suggested should be repealed. The power of disposal is a difficult matter. It is obvious that the Museum should not be compelled to retain, if its trustees do not want to, objects of which it has a number of duplicates, damaged articles or verminous articles, which might cause damage to others. There is also the question which arises from time to time of objects which are discovered to be fraudulent or forgeries, which it would be extremely embarrasing to compel the Museum to retain and exhibit.
The powers that are proposed hold a fair balance between, on the one hand, allowing an irresponsible trustee body recklessly to dispose of articles which its successors might think should be retained and, on the other, compelling what will, in fact, be a highly responsible body of men to retain objects which no sane person would wish to retain in the Museum. It is a question of getting it just right. In Committee, we can discuss it, but I suggest to the House that we have got it broadly right.
There is then the special provision in respect of unwanted books and periodicals. Microfilming has made great progress and has many advantages from the point of view of convenience of search and the saving of space. On the other hand, nobody feels that really ancient documents, even though their contents may be microfilmed, should even be in a position to be considered for disposal. We have, therefore, put tentatively the date of 1850 as the line of demarcation. That has this merit. It was in the second half of the last century that the vast increase in printed matter, which is pouring into the Museum as into other places, really got under way.
There is also a very practical point—this is perhaps a Committee point—that it was within a few years of that date that rag paper, which endures well, ceased largely to be used and was replaced by paper made from wood pulp, which has a much poorer life. I am sure that the House will feel that we have to steer between compelling the


Museum to retain every bit of temporary, perhaps, meretricious, material which could perfectly well be microfilmed and disposed of, and allowing, even in theory, the disposal of anything whose disposal might subsequently cause regret.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves this point about the lending and disposing of objects, can he tell us whether consideration has been given to the possibility of exchanges, either on a longterm loan basis or on a permanent basis? Archaeology progresses. New objects of great artistic virtue are discovered. The British Museum has very extensive collections in some ranges, but is very short in others. The time may well come when, on a long-term loan basis or on an exchange of gifts basis, the Museum will wish to replace some of the objects of which it has many with some other range of objects of which it is short. Has this contingency occurred to the Government, and, if so, in what kind of way would the trustees be able to face this problem in future under the Bill?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: First, as regards loans, long-term or short, the hon. Gentleman may have heard me tell the House at some length of the increased lending powers which the Bill proposes to confer upon the trustees. I do not think that I can add anything to that. They are to be given, in their discretion and subject to the proviso in Clause 4 about the interests of those who wish to see these things, very wide lending powers. The power as to disposal is much more limited, as the hon. Gentleman apprehended, and, I think, rightly so.
I cannot myself envisage a situation in which any major article ought to be exchanged for some other without rather more consideration being given to it than simply lumping it in with powers of disposal. If the trustees were to indicate that they felt any difficulty about the matter, probably it would be a matter for the Government to act. As I understand, the Bill certainly does not contain provisions expressly relating to the exchange of articles of real value and significance.
For this reason, I think that the House may care to consider this later. These

are national possessions. If it were to be a question of exchange of some article of major importance, the House might wish to be consulted before any such action could be taken. That would be my own feeling. I cannot speak for the trustees in this respect, but I have a feeling that that would be the attitude of a good many of them.

Mr. F. Noel-Baker: I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I do not want to trespass unduly upon his time. On this question of possible exchanges I do not have in mind only one particular collection, to which I hope to refer later. This applies to a number of cases. Would the Government consider looking at the question of exchanges and the wording of Clause 4 before we reach the Committee stage?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I will consider what the hon. Gentleman says, but my own preliminary view is that any exchange of anything of significance, even of things of much less significance than the priceless objects about which I know the hon. Gentleman is concerned, would be a matter which, I should have thought—it is not for me to say—would have caused some hesitation. I would judge that the House might be hesitant about conferring any general power. It is a power which I would guess the trustees might not be willing to have.
To take the specific example about which the hon. Gentleman signed a letter to The Times yesterday, any question of doing that—I express no view whatever on the merits—is possibly a matter of major importance which it would be utterly wrong for anybody other than Parliament even to consider authorising. To do it by way of disposal or exchange powers in a Bill would be utterly wrong and contrary to the overwhelming weight of public opinion.
The fourth subject is the setting up of a separate trustee body for the Natural History Museum. That body has for many years, de facto, had a separate existence; it has its own director, own buildings and its field of activity is different from that of Bloomsbury. It seems logical, therefore, to appoint a separate trustee body which would be composed of people whose interests are more concentrated in this particular direction. It is proposed that, since the


Museum is smaller, the body should be smaller than that proposed for Bloomsbury.
Of the 12 people, eight will be appointed by the Prime Minister on the same basis as those for Bloomsbury—though I think it likely that my right hon. Friend would probably wish to consult the Minister for Science in respect of appointments of this sort—one will be nominated by the Royal Society and three—again, on the same principle as Bloomsbury—will be co-opted by the body concerned; that is, the trustee body itself.
It will retain the words "British Museum" in its title, which will be "British Museum (Natural History)," with the outstation at Tring which I have mentioned. This contains collections bequeathed by the second Lord Rothschild the galleries of zoological and entomological exhibits, the research galleries of lepidoptera, or, as they are better known, butterflies, and, I am advised, the world's finest collection of siphonaptera, which means fleas.
The Bill has been ruled as a hybrid Measure and, in deference to that ruling, if the House gives it a Second Reading, I shall move the procedure Motion which is on the Order Paper. The purpose of that, in the light of the ruling which has been given, is to give any individuals the opportunity, if they think fit and feel adversely affected, to petition. I understand that all the necessary notices have been served on those who might be thought to be in that position.
Although this is technically what we are told and accept to be a hybrid Bill, its purpose is essentially public. The British Museum has played an enormous part in the cultural and intellectual life of the nation. I believe that the devoted and able people who have and will serve it in different capacities can make it play an even greater part in our national life and I am sure that the House can help by freeing the Museum from much of its outdated and obsolete restrictions and restrictive legislation and by giving it a constitution which will enable it more effectively to perform the high role required alike by its great inheritance and its ever-increasing need to cater for an ever-better educated nation.

Mr. Rees-Davies: Before my right hon. Friend sits down, will he comment on two brief matters which are of substantial importance? First, my right hon. Friend explained about the hybrid ruling and I appreciate that. Is he governed by that in any way regarding the number who may serve on the Standing Committee? He might find it useful if he had more than the eight who are contemplated. Secondly, under the terms of the Bill, in Clause 2, there is no direct provision in the matter of the powers of the British Museum.
There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether there should be an Oriental museum catering for oriental art within the ambit of the British Museum. There is strong feeling on this score and I am in favour of it. I would like to know what the Bill—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I feel that the hon. Member is going too far in a short question before the Minister sits down.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: On the first point, my hon. Friend is under a misapprehension. It is not a Standing Committee under the procedure Motion to which we shall commit the Bill, but a Select Committee, which proceeds by way of dealing with petitions. I understand that the number of Members proposed follows custom and precedent and I would certainly have thought that the body which is to deal with petitions would not like to be too big.
On the second point, it might be better if my hon. Friend seeks to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, when he will have an opportunity of deploying his arguments further, after which the Economic Secretary could give them the respectful attention I am sure they will deserve.

Mr. Mitchison: I, too, would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question before he sits down. Is he aware that this is the first time that I have ever heard a Treasury Minister introduce a Bill without mentioning the sordid subject of money? Has the right hon. Gentleman anything to say about the funds which will be available to the British Museum?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The Bill is not a financial Measure. It is obvious, however, that it clears the way for what will be a very considerable amount of expense indeed in respect of the library and, to some extent, the Science Library, but the Bill is not itself directly involved with the authorisation of money.

4.47 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: We are indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for some of the interesting material he has unearthed from the past. This survival has been very persistent in this country and it is high time that the constitution of the British Museum was revised. I am glad that the Bill is going to do it. But there are several broad questions we should consider. We are laying on the trustees two general duties; one to keep and the other to exhibit the unrivalled magnificent collections in their charge.
Those are expensive matters and I shall deal with that aspect shortly. I note. to begin with, that the last report of the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries showed a very sharp fall in the attendance of the public at the British Museum compared with other public exhibitions. The position is that before the war there were 1 million or more people going to the British Museum every year and that, while the number has not fallen to quite a half, it has, roughly speaking, fallen to about two-thirds. Some years are better than others. There is a table at the end of the report, and if one studies it and then studies the detailed figures, one discovers that the statistics are rather worse than those selected for the purpose of the table. I am not suggesting that anyone tried to "cook" the figures but they are certainly not better and, if anything, are actually a bit worse.
It really amounts to this. Taking the two years 1955 and 1959—against the figures of about 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 before the war—the attendance in the two post-war years I have mentioned was between 600,000 and 700,000. There was a slight improvement, to about 800,000, in 1960, which is the last available year. I am afraid that the reason for the decline is not lack of value or general interest in the collections shown but the quite remarkable difficulty there

appears to be of showing them in an attractive and sufficient fashion.
Certain journalists not only in The Times have had a bit of fun about this. There was an amusing article in the New Statesman on 9th November from which I shall quote a sentence which gives one a lively picture of what may be found by a searching journalist in the British Museum.
In inspiring with gallant amateur tradition inspiring English museums, display is handled by the keepers.
I have nothing to say against the keepers. The article continued:
Following this system, the Nimrud bas-reliefs lined a gangway resembling some archaic penitentiary, where enamel lampshades cast their palor on green emulsion which the Ministry of Works evidently had left over from repainting police stations. A warder sat there alone, his halibu eye roaming the exploits of Nimrud, 'Not much company', he mumbled, People pass through 'ere very quick.
Another passage is in the like sense.
Not all of what is in the British Museum, but some of it, has a great deal of this character. It is not because the trustees have not done a good job. It is not because the collections themselves are not very wonderful indeed. It really has been because of lack of money and space. The Times had one leader about this, and then it thought that it had not gone quite far enough, and it had another. It was the second one from which the right hon. Gentleman quoted. I call the attention of the House to what it expects from us:
As a subject of legislation, the British Museum has always occasioned strong argument in Parliament and this Bill promises to be no exception.
I hope that we shall live up to that this afternoon; it is the least that we can do. So far, that is the position as it is.
Then, when one looks at the steps which have been taken, they really have been moving very slowly. It is not the trustees, it is not the Standing Commission, but the Treasury which has been in the way. It is rather appalling, having introduced a bright new idea, that a new building is to be put up—I am glad to hear that it is now going to be done—to find that this was first suggested and mentioned in reports in 1937. Nothing has been done about it. It has just stayed there until quite recently. The last Report of the Standing Commission


mentioned it as something that was now going to form part of a programme. It is quite a long time even for the British Museum—1937 to 1962 is 25 years. I know that there was a war in between, but even allowing for that, it is slow indeed.
When one comes to look at the last Report—and this is the last information that most of us at any rate have about this—we find that this was a Report published in 1961, relating to the two years 1959 to 1960. It describes the high building needs which it had recommended in its fifth Report, which was two years previously, as being of the first priority—one is a matter which we have just had mentioned to us—and it speaks about the progress, such as it is, that has been made. Then it comes in paragraph 64 to this:
Display and storage space are still desperately short.
It goes further by talking about the difficulties of housing the ethnographical material, and states that about 95 per cent. of the whole vast and valuable collection is not displayed or used in any way. This constitutes, as appeared in one of these lively articles, "the ethnographers in the basement", I suppose they were the people working on it down there.
The Report proceeds from that to other matters, to the fact of the war-damaged galleries not yet having been repaired, and states in paragraph 66:
We regard all this reconstruction as a matter of extreme urgency and we strongly urge that it should be pressed on as rapidly as possible.
These are not the trustees. This is the Standing Commission charged with the general responsibility not only for the British Museum but for other principal museums and galleries, and, therefore, having regard not only to the claims of the British Museum but to those of other galleries, too.
Before I leave the question of money—I have been talking so far about work that appears necessary for building purposes—I recognise that this is a very large bill indeed. It is a very large bill because, like some of the bills which we receive about Christmas time, it has been accumulating and for far longer than the usual credit terms, for years and

years, decades and decades. We have cut the money short for the British Museum and the collections that it houses, and the result is that instead of being a real credit to this country as a museum, as other museums are and can be, this is really a disgraceful bit of old-fashioned insufficiency for the purposes for which it is designed and which are repeated in this Bill. I earnestly trust that the silence of the Treasury today on the matter of money, which usually concerns it, does not mean that it is going to preserve the tradition of incredible stinginess over the buildings and accommodation required for this national institution.
Before I leave that subject, I want to say a word about the running expenses. We have had the ridiculous position—I do not know if it is to go on—of the Home Secretary appearing every year with a petition from the trustees saying that they have not enough money and asking Parliament to give them some. I do not know what all this is about, but it is another of these interesting cobwebs that hang about, and whatever has happened over it, the practical point is that the British Museum gets for new purchases a grant of £100,000 a year and no more. I think that I am right in saying that last year it raised £105,000 by selling the catalogues of its own printed books, and, of course, the £105,000 so raised went into the Vote. The result was that so far as those transactions go the Treasury succeeded in the incredible task of making a bit of profit out of the national collections. It is quite true that that does not take account of salaries and that sort of thing, and one must not take it too seriously, nonetheless it shows the gross insufficiency of the annual amount that is provided.
It is quite true that from time to time special grants are made. One grant I think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned was for the Dyson Perrins manuscripts. I do not want to trouble the House by going into the detail of all this, but I have a very distinct impression when looking at these grants rather carefully that the British Museum has not quite had its fair share, and that on the whole the special grants have been devoted more to buying pictures and the like than to buying stuff for the British Museum. It is perhaps the very excellence of the British Museum's own


collections that has had that result, but it is an unfortunate one, and I suggest that an institution of this kind should not have to come and ask for special grants to the extent which will be necessary if the limitation to £100,000 a year is persisted in.
I have some reason for saying that. The Treasury made one of those very crafty arrangements with the trustees by which, calling down the name of Lord Plowden, they provided for the same sum for five years. That is all right for the recipient if prices go down, but in these matters prices go up, and go up sharply and steeply. The result is that £100,000 two ' or three years ago, when the arrangement was made, would have got a good deal more than £100,000 would get now, or is likely to get in two or three years' time. I therefore hope that in the light of what is now being done to brush away some of the cobwebs, we shall increase not only the capital expenditure—that we shall certainly have to do, and in the Financial Memorandum there is mention of £10 million—but also the £100,000 a year, which is a lamentable sum for this purpose.
I turn from that to the appointment of trustees. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister is becoming a pluralist. He bagged seventy-seven pheasants the other day and is now appointing fifteen trustees. I wish that he would not deal in these large numbers. It is not right to leave the vast majority of the trustees to be appointed by the Prime Minister of the day—though, of course, on advice. This is particularly so in this case, and it is recognised to some extent by empowering, I think, four bodies to nominate a trustee each. One comment on that is that every single one is an English body and this is the British Museum. I know that it is in London—I see it from time to time—but I think that the Scots have a case over this, and I would have suggested that one, at any rate, of the trustees might have been appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
I would suggest other Ministers. One was mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman himself, but only in connection with the Natural History Museum. It seems to me to be quite wrong that the Minister for Science should be left out in this very pointed way. He is surely

one of the people most obviously concerned with appointing trustees for both the British Museum (Natural History) and for the British Museum itself.
There is also the curious anomaly that the Victoria and Albert Museum is carried on the Ministry of Education Votes and is, in effect, a Ministry of Education institution. The British Museum is nothing of the sort. I am not in favour of handing over the British Museum lock stock and barrel to the Ministry of Education, though others may be, but if we are to have the kind of structure that is indicated in the Bill the Minister of Education of the day should have a voice. I do not at this stage propose to attempt to detail the proper nominations, but to have 15 trustees appointed by the Prime Minister and none by some of the others I have indicated seems to be wrong.
Is there not also a case here for the universities? The University of London is next door to the British Museum, and one cannot quite eliminate physical neighbourhood in such matters. It is not for me to choose between a number of other universities, but I should have thought that the Vice-Chancellors' Committee was in a position to take any appropriate action in the matter. I think that the appointment of trustees should be given a rather broader basis than is provided by merely a large majority of Prime Minister's nominations.
I do not want to say anything about the past, though I felt 'that the right hon. Gentleman rather omitted from the number of curious Ministers and officials who were formerly and nominally part of the trustees as instituted in the eighteenth century. The practical point is that they have done their work through a Standing Commission. I remember the case of a man who once had a quarrel with the Board of Trade. The solicitor for the Board of Trade refused to accept service. It was a grave tactical error, because this litigant then proceeded to serve the members of the Board—and they were a very odd lot—and it was the first time they had ever realised that they had any responsibility for the doings of the President.
This is perhaps not quite such an extreme case, but when we find that twenty or thereabouts is the right


number for practical purposes, although the nominal strength of the Committee is 51, why increase it further by this Bill to 25? I do not understand that, and the Government might think it over. The sensible thing in such cases is certainly not to have a larger committee but probably a smaller one; to reduce the number of Prime Minister's appointments, to make the Ministers really concerned take a hand, and, to a limited degree, to give the universities, through the Vice-Chancellors' Committee, a voice in the matter. So much for the constitution of the trustees.
There are other people concerned in the running of the Museum. They vary from the director to the warder with the halibut eye who atttracted the attention of the journalist writing in the New Statesman. They all deserve not only the thanks one would give to anybody doing a public service but the thanks one specially gives to people who do it in admittedly rather difficult conditions. Their position should be cleared up.
I speak subject to correction, but it seems that they are appointed originally by the Civil Service Commissioners—or, at any rate, are examined by them in some form or another. They are then employed, and may be sacked, by the trustees, but the conditions of their employment are largely determined by the Treasury. I do not know what they are. Are they civil servants or are they not? What are they? It is only fair to people who are employed in the public service that their status should be defined, and it should be defined in this Bill. The position may have arisen in all sorts of ways, but I think that it has got into a muddle of an historic character, and it may result—I do not say that it necessarily will—in injustice occasionally, or put all those concerned in running the Museum—the high-ups, as it were—in a rather difficult position, because they do not quite know what their powers may be.
I use another feature of the Museum itself, as a sort of peg on which to hang a little more. The Reading Room is at present extensively used by all sorts of people, and it has been extensively used through its long history. No doubt

some people do highly important work there, while others do less important work. It is really an essential instrument for the promotion of research and learning, and there is nothing in the country, although we have some other magnificent libraries, that quite serves the same purpose.
The party opposite is rather slow to recognise it, but nowadays quite a lot of people work in the day and want to pursue their researches afterwards. Am I right in supposing—and I hope that I may be interrupted if I am wrong—that at present the Reading Room is opened only at night or in the late evening on two days a week? What is the reason for that? It seems rather absurd.
If it is to be shut at all, I should have thought that some other part of the day would have been better, but I suggest that we must ensure that people who are doing their ordinary daily work, as most of us have to do, have the opportunity of research work, study, or whatever it may be called, in the evenings in the library there. I understand that the trustees themselves and the Standing Commission fully recognise the advantage of this, but, again, it has been a money question. The Treasury has not provided enough money for the staff and to meet the additional expense generally involved to enable this to be done. When a Treasury Minister is asked about it, he says that for some reason or other it cannot be done or it cannot be done yet.
The time has come, now that we are considering this Bill, to realise that this part of the institution and, for that matter, other parts, too, are the property of the public devoted to public service, and they must be made as suitable as possible for that public service. If it is a question of employing more people, as obviously it would be in the case I have just raised, then more people must be employed. Their work will not be wasted. In the long run, we in this country depend on how intelligent we are and how intelligent we can make ourselves. This applies to us, perhaps, more than to any other country. Here is something which serves that purpose. To have all these books and collections and then, for lack of what is, compared with the national income, a comparatively small amount, not to use them


properly and not to display them properly is surely the most short-sighted policy of which any Government can be capable.
I do not say that all Governments have been perfect about this. Far from it. There is a sort of inertia about it. The article in the New Statesman was headed "The Bloomsbury Megatherium". Megatheria, I understand, moved rather slowly. They did not survive very long because they were slow-moving and easily dealt with by smaller fry. We do not want to have a megatherium in Bloomsbury. There is no reason why we should. I beg the Government, on the occasion of this Bill, to reconsider their whole attitude to this institution, to recognise that the attitude in the past has been very short-sighted, to take to heart some of the many prayers and injunctions laid upon them in the reports of the Standing Commission and to do something about them, putting a new spirit into the whole business.
In conclusion, I think it right to repeat that I do not regard the trustees as in any way to blame for what has happened. So far as an outsider can judge, they have done the best they could in difficult circumstances. But I beg the Government to regard this as a new problem and one to be approached in a quite different light. I shall not vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, As far as it goes, the Bill clears away cobwebs and does some minor things which I have not even mentioned and which obviously ought to be done, some of them the subject of occasional legislation, as the right hon. Gentleman said. However, it is a lamentably small effort. When they were looking at the British Museum as a whole, the Government really ought to have done rather better.

5.14 p.m.

Mr. Richard Thompson: I give the Bill the rather qualified welcome which a gladiator in the days of Imperial Rome would have given to the Emperor presiding over the arena. Although my right hon. Friend may not, perhaps, qualify for the other role, I feel rather like saying to him, as the gladiator said, "Hail, Caesar. We who are about to die salute thee." That, of course, is the cry of a family trustee who perceives in the Bill the seeds of his own dissolution.
I do not want to be ungenerous just because of a personal thought. There is no doubt that we are dealing with the greatest institution of its kind in the world. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend when he says that the forms of management and organisation appropriate to 1753, the date of the principal Act which founded the Museum, are not appropriate today and that this seems to be a good opportunity to bring them up to date and improve them as much as we can.
I agree with most of the Bill's provisions, but I have some reservations. Perhaps I may first get off the small chip which rests on the shoulder of the family trustees. The family trustees are an electing body. They do not run the Museum from day to day in the sense that the Standing Committee does. Their main function is to decide who goes on the standing committee. I contend that, during the ten years in which I have been a trustee, we have done our work really rather well. I prepared a list of those whom we have appointed to the Standing Committee, and I say that, judged by any standard of scholarship and of eminence in the world of affairs, we chose rather well. Our first choice, in point of time, was the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), and a most excellent trustee he has been. He brought unique qualities of knowledge of the world of education to his job and he has discharged it very well. Looking down the list, we have appointed Lord Radcliffe, Sir William Hayter, Lord Hurcomb, Sir Stephen Runciman, Professor Pantin and Lord Boyd.
Whatever system of appointment one had, by Prime Minister's nomination or anything else, it would be difficult to choose a body of men more appropriate to their task than those Whom we chose. It is one of our rather typical British institutions. If one dissects it and tries to pretend that it is logical or that it makes any particular sense, one finds that it does not. It can be torn to pieces quite easily. In practice, however, it works rather well, as can be seen from the results.
I feel that the country owes a small debt of acknowledgement to the six families who, in some cases for nothing and in others for a consideration really quite trifling in money terms, gave the


magnificent collections the value of which just could not be computed today. The country owes a small debt of acknowledgement to those families whose combined bequests established the foundations on which the great collections rest.
My own family interest, that of Sir Robert Cotton, was the earliest of the lot. We got his collection for nothing, a full hundred years before the Museum proper began, and it has been the foundation of what is undoubtedly the greatest library in the world today. Incidentally, if anyone wants to know something about that fascinating erratic figure. there is a wonderful biography, A Fly in Amber, which tells us something about him.
I do not see how one could write it into the Bill, but I think it sensible that some sort of acknowledgement should be made to those family trustees representing the five families. If they are not interested, if they do not come, we can forget them. But some of them have been interested. Some of them have come. I am thinking also of Viscount Valentia, my co-Cottonian trustee. I should like to see some gesture made. The country has had a very great increase in its cultural resources as a result of what they did.
I liked what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies). Why not consider, in the future, offering trusteeships to patrons who are moved to make really substantial bequests to the Museum? I see no reason why not. Why should not latter-day patrons—the Nuffields, the Clores and people of that kind who have a lot of money and who present some magnificent collections to the Museum—have an opportunity to be honoured in this rather special way? This is the day of status symbols. It would not cost the country anything. My trusteeship has cost the country absolutely nothing, not even a railway fare, during the past ten years. I believe that we might attract some people to use their money in a good and worthy way and add to the collections if they thought that there was that little bit of patronage, to call it that, attached to doing so.
I turn to the new governing bodies Which are proposed. This is my second small bone of contention. Is it necessary to split the administration of these two

museums in the way contemplated in this Bill? I go some way with the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) in what he said about the method of arriving at the composition of the governing bodies. I should like there to be fewer Prime Minister appointments—I speak not necessarily of my right hon. Friend but of any future Prime Minister—not because I think he would necessarily get them wrong but because in appointments of this kind there is a great temptation to select the fashionable archaeologist of the day, or some economist who has made a great noise on the television, for service on the governing body as some appropriate recognition of their perhaps rather dubious talents.
It would be a very great pity if that happened. The result would be to cheapen and reduce the influence of a body which should consist, as it consists today, of the most distinguished people in this country in education, research, science and knowledge generally. I should be very sorry to see this become a sort of "jobs for the boys" set-up. We want first-class people to serve on this body in their own right and not for some extraneous reason.
While I do not quarrel with the idea that the Prime Minister should nominate a number of trustees, I should like the number nominated by him cut down a bit and greater representation of the learned societies, which really have the chaps who can make a contribution in this respect. I should not exclude women.

Mrs. Eirene White: Hear, hear.

Mr. Thompson: I am delighted that I have the hon. Lady with me on this. We have a very distinguished lady trustee who is the President of the Society of Antiquaries, and she makes a very valuable contribution to our deliberations. If we are slightly altering the balance, I would increase the power of co-option of the trustees to a little bit more than five. To that extent, I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Kettering.
The desire to split the administration of the two museums into two distinct trustee bodies is probably founded on a misconception. There are very strong


practical reasons why bath sets of trustees should serve on a body common to both museums. I am opposed to total separation which, as I see it, is envisaged in the Bill. I suppose that this stems from the fact that people believe that today is an age of great specialisation and that a body of men competent to pronounce on the !habits of water fleas cannot necessarily form a proper judgment on the age of certain Assyrian remains. I suppose that that is the idea behind it, but I do not believe that it is right, because the development of modern methods of research and educational display has a great deal in common for both museums. I am sure that both of them face similar problems when they consider how best to present their exhibits and collections to the public. I do not believe that they can work in completely watertight compartments in this respect.
Some of the most important work of the two museums now overlaps completely. This is particularly true in archaeology and anthropology—such things as the origin and nature of man's culture and his effect on his surroundings and the natural world. These surely are matters of paramount importance today. Both museums are involved in this study and both apply the same research methods.
I say again that I do not think we can draw a firm dividing line, and I hope that we shall not try to do so. Twenty-five years ago, not so very long ago, when I first took some interest in these matters, history shaded off into archaeology somewhere around 4000 B.C.—for example, at Ur of the Chaldees and the first Egyptian dynasty—but today, thanks to the much more accurate techniques of dating which are available, we have knowledge of climatic and cultural change extending through the neolithic period back to about 10,000 years ago, an immense extension in that dimension. We also have a good degree of knowledge right into paleolithic times through the successive phases of the Ice Age. In the museum at Bloomsbury there is some material reliably estimated to be about 150,000 years old. This process goes back to the very start of the Ice Age, perhaps back half a million years.
In view of this, it seems unreal to me that we can claim that there is an

absolute separation between the functions of the two museums. As I have said, research methods are really common to both, and they are founded, first, on the modern system of radio-carbon dating which enables us to go back, perhaps, 70,000 years with considerable accuracy, and, secondly, on, the technique of pollen analysis which was developed here and in Scandinavia and which enables us to trace world changes in climate and vegetation and the effect of man's unexpectedly early agriculture. Finally, we are reaping the benefit of the critical technical research methods which started here in archeology with Sir Flinders Petrie and in paleontology in the United States with Henry Osborn. Therefore, why cannot we have for our new structure some interlocking between the two committees which are to be set up to run these two great institutions? We can, perhaps, deal with that in Committee.
I add my words of tribute to the staff of this very great institution. Some things have been said today which suggest that the British Museum, particularly at Bloomsbury, is a stuffy old institution, unimaginatively displayed and with many things to put right. I do not share that view. The hon. and learned Member for Kettering put his finger on the point when he said that shortage of money was basically at the root of all this. I am sure that the 'trustees, who have often had to make bricks without straw, have been right in concentrating on the important and essential things and not squandering money. which was hard to get, on great public relations displays, luncheons, receptions and entertainments, which bring one side of an institution into the public mind and, perhaps, create a certain impression in the public mind but which to dedicated people running a great institution is not an appropriate way to spend scanty funds. Perhaps we have sometimes had a bad Press, but I would sooner have that and feel that the money was being spent on the right things and for the right purposes than have it the other way round.
The Bill is overdue. I agree wholeheartedly with most of it. However, I believe that it can be improved in the ways that I have suggested. I hope that the House will give it an unopposed and enthusiastic Second Reading.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. John Dugdale: I am sure that nobody in the House wishes to oppose the Bill, although some of us feel that certain things in it are not quite perfect. I was interested today to read, as other hon. Members have done, that The Times, which, after all, is a well-known supporter of the Government on most occasions, rapped them severely on the knuckles and made a lot of pointed comments about various omissions from the Bill and items in it which should be altered.
I am, however, glad that the Government have found time to bring in the Bill. It is interesting that they should have found time to do it now. It appears that they are marking time quietly before facing the country in an election and, no doubt, it is a good thing to have a few Bills like this going peacefully on because they have nothing better to introduce. That, however, is rather another matter.
The first point to which I should like to refer in the Bill is that, as The Times said today, the British Museum is both an international collection and also a centre of learning and research. Is this the best method for running those two quite separate things? Should they be run in one institution by one body? I do not know, but at least it is questionable to have these two quite different purposes followed, as they are today, in one structure under one body. It is for consideration whether there might not be a better method of separating these two entirely different functions and placing them under separate bodies. I suggest that this is a possibility.
One matter which is not satisfactory is that the Treasury, of all people, should run the Museum. I say this with no disrespect to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, but I do not consider that the Treasury, whose whole life is spent in saving money and showing how money should not be spent, is the right body to run what is, in a small way, a spending institution. The people in the Treasury can think of every reason why institutions should not get more money. Their whole life is devoted to that purpose and they do it successfully. In this case, however, the task of the people running the Museum should be to find what reasons there are why the Museum should get

more money. For that reason, the Treasury is not, perhaps, the best Department to be in charge of the Museum.

Mr. Rees-Davies: Would not the right hon. Gentleman, from his recollection, say that the Treasury, and certainly the officials there, have a rather strong intellectual outlook and, if anything, are rather generous in their approach towards the Museum? Secondly, if the right hon. Gentleman would move control away from the Treasury, to which Ministry would he give it?

Mr. Dugdale: I was coming to that; the hon. Member has anticipated me. If I say that control should be removed from the Treasury, plainly I must suggest where it should go. The House has never liked the idea of having a Ministry of Fine Arts; somehow, that suggestion has been repugnant. The Museum might, however, well go to the Minister of Public Building and Works. I see no reason against it.
I add, although it is not strictly within the purview of the Bill, that the Minister of Public Building and Works should have charge of a number of other institutions connected with the arts. It is entirely wrong, for example, that the Crown Commissioners, who look after the buildings in Regent's Park, should be under the control of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and of him alone and that nobody else can make a final decision.
I had a case concerning the Crown Commissioners immediately before the Budget. Obviously, I could not interrupt the Chancellor in preparing his Budget speech and I had, therefore, to wait until afterwards, because only he could deal with Regent's Park. It seems wrong that so many of these matters come under the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In the same way, I regard it as quite wrong that so many appointments to the Board should be made by the Prime Minister. As we on this side know, the Prime Minister has a number of admirable qualities and we have the greatest admiration for all the work he does. I could speak about that at length, although my hon. Friends do not necessarily agree with me. Whatever may be the Prime Minister's qualities, however, I do not see how he can go to the Bahamas, have conferences with President Kennedy and


at the same time look after the British Museum, which is one of his duties. He has too many occupations and this one should be taken away from him. It is, Therefore, basically wrong that the British Museum comes directly under the Treasury and that the Board should be appointed by the Prime Minister under what The Times called an "algebraical formula". I regarded that as a rather pleasant phrase.
Why is the Royal Academy represented on the Board? Surely, the Royal Academy is an institution whose duty is to collect those paintings which will not be famous in future years, as opposed to the other galleries which exhibit paintings by people who are likely to become famous but are not very popular at the moment. The Royal Academy's attitude in regard to the Leonardo did not give people all that much confidence. The Academy kept the Leonardo locked up for years where nobody could see it. Representatives of the Academy are not necessarily the best people to have on the Board of the Museum. A representative of the National Gallery would be far better. Be that as it may, this is a detail which can be dealt with in Committee.
There are two points which concern me. The first is that one of the duties of the Museum is to keep objects confined. That sounds magnificent, but how do we know that they are kept confined? Only today, I had lunch with a friend of mine, who reminded me that some years ago he went to the Geological Museum and took with him a chestnut and a piece of coal. He placed both objects in the Museum and they remained there for months. That sort of thing could, presumably, be done at the British Museum also. I hope that a check is made to see that it is not done. What is much more important is to ensure that objects which it is desirable to keep are kept.
We have recently all been distressed by the theft of the Goya from the National Gallery. I have no reason to suppose that the security arrangements of the British Museum are not perfect, but what I do not want to happen is that one day we suddenly awake to find that a number of important things have been removed and that investigations are made and something is done too

late. There are many things which could, perhaps, be removed with advantage, but there are many which it would be unfortunate to remove. I hope that we do not find ourselves in the position in which the Government and the country found themselves after the theft from the National Gallery.
I merely wished to make these few observations and to say that I welcome the Bill as far as it goes, but that there is much that can be amended in Committee. I hope that when the time comes, the Government will accept some of our Amendments.

5.40 p.m.

Sir Hendrie Oakshott (Bebington): My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. R. Thompson) accused himself, as it were, of having a chip on his shoulder, and quite rightly said that one could not write expressions of gratitude into a Bill. I hope that he will accept a humble expression from me of the thanks and gratitude which I feel to those families to whom the British Museum and the nation owe so much.
I hope that my hon. Friend will also allow me to say how much I enjoyed his speech. I have neither the academic, literary, scientific nor probably even the cultural qualifications to enable me to speak about the Museum with anything but the smallest authority, so my intervention will be very short indeed. But I wish to make an appeal to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and I suspect that I shall not be the only hon. Member to make it in this debate. This is an appeal for the return of some of the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
My right hon. Friend was perfectly right when he said, in reply to an intervention from the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) that the disposal in any form of any part of anything as important as this splendid collection must be a matter for Parliament to decide. But will he, between now and later stages of the Bill, examine seriously whether he cannot insert into it a provision which might allow the trustees to dispose—and I do not necessarily mean by that finally to dispose, but to lend as well—under properly defined circumstances, and within strict limits, some of the treasures of the Museum?
In May last year my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at Question Time that he was giving consideration to the future of the Elgin Marbles. This Bill, if we so wish, could give us an opportunity of paying a compliment to our Greek friends which would touch them deeply and would give them much pleasure.
I do not believe that the validity of our title to the Marbles is really questioned, but it would be a fine gesture if we could make some free gift. I say "some" because I do not go as far as certain other people and certainly do not advocate that the whole collection should be returned. I am sure that that would be wrong. But I have one suggestion for which I am indebted to a friend who is rather an expert in these matters, and I put it forward to the House.
I do not want to see the pediments or the frieze going back; but we have the Caryatid in the Museum The rest of this series of figures forms a very beautiful porch in the Erechtheum, where the Caryatid at present in the British Museum is represented by a plaster image. Could we not return the Caryatid so that this maiden could have her proper niche where she really belongs? It is the sort of gesture which would give immense pleasure to the people of Greece, and I do not like to think that we may appear to be rather greedy and selfish here ourselves.
There is, of course, the climatic hazard in moving a figure like that and I suppose that the change from the atmosphere of Bloomsbury, where she has been languishing for such a long time, to the pure air and light of Parthenon Hill would be a shock. But can we not try it and see what the weather effects might be over the next ten or fifteen years? Or could the figure not be treated in some way so as to minimise the risk of change of climate? I hope that my right hon. Friend will head my plea and say that something can be done.
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has heard a legend which, I believe is current in Greece? It is that if sounds of sobbing are heard at night in the British Museum it is the Caryatid weeping for her lost sisters, and crying

to be reunited with them. I hope that my right hon. Friend can bring comfort to this sad and lovely figure.

5.44 p.m.

Mr. F. Noel-Baker: I followed the hon. Member for Bebington (Sir H. Oakshott) with the greatest pleasure and some surprise. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury will not be surprised if I refer to the Elgin Marbles, for I have raised the subject on more than one occasion. I was delighted by the speech of the hon. Member for Bebington and I am sorry I was not in touch with him before this debate and that I did not invite him to sign a letter which appeared in The Times yesterday.
I am very anxious not to say anything which will encourage the Government to be more negative than they have been up to now on this matter. I was glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that he thought that special legislation would be required supposing a gesture of the kind the hon. Member for Bebington has suggested—and which I heartily support—were made. I do not quarrel with that, although I think that there is a case for making the possibility of there being exchanges, as I said in an earlier intervention, rather easier. The factors which have to be borne in mind by the trustees of the British Museum might be extended to include consideration of exchange, when they are deciding whether or not to lend objects from the collection to other museums.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, the Elgin marbles are a priceless possession of the Museum. I would not myself go to the length of advocating that the whole collection should be returned. I think that many people in responsible positions in Greece have a very just appreciation of the great cultural value to the world and to their own reputation of having Greek objects of great beauty and significance in other countries. This includes some of the things now in the British Museum.
But I think that there is an overwhelming case for a generous gesture which would include the return of the Caryatid and also another piece from the Erechtheum which has deep significance for the Erechtheum itself. This is the pillar removed from the far corner. I


should like the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to look at a recent photograph of that corner of the Erechtheum. I believe that Lord Elgin gave instructions to the Italian responsible for collecting the various objects removed from the Acropolis to take one of each kind, and this one column was removed from the structure of the Erechtheum.
Restoration of the building cannot be proceeded with because of the absence of this column, which is lying at the British Museum blackened and apparently neglected in a place where nobody sees it. There is no possible argument, except perhaps the one of precedent, for keeping this column, which is an integral part of the building, and has no significance for the visitor to the British Museum in Bloomsbury.
A reasonable discussion on the position of some other fragments might lead the trustees to conclude that they should be returned. But I am bound to say that the search for some more limited gesture, with the possibility of a reciprocal gesture by the Greeks, is not helped by the really awful surroundings in which the frieze from the Parthenon is now displayed.
Has the right hon. Gentleman been to the Duveen Gallery lately? As a place for the display of the frieze from the Parthenon it compares badly with the previous site. The only improvement, indeed, is the air cleaning machinery. I do not know whether it was a Caryatid or that machinery which the hon. Member for Bebington heard wailing, because although it cleans the air and the Frieze is now protected from air pollution—something which many of us feel should have been done many years ago—the machinery makes a frightful noise. The wailing of the air as it goes out of the machinery is very alarming.
But it is not nearly so alarming as the architecture of the Gallery. I am told that the late Lord Duveen, rejecting two schemes placed before him by the trustees, commissioned an architect whose experience had been building railway stations in the United States. Certainly the Gallery has too much similarity with American railway stations. There are mock doric columns at each end surrounded by marble of an orange tint which has the effect of making these

friezes, the beauty of whose marble is something by which everybody is struck when they see their companions in Greece, look a kind of sickly and jaundiced green.
I beg the Chief Secretary to pass on to the trustees of the Museum the plea that they should reconsider the present siting of the friezes in the Duveen Gallery. The colour of the marble, the colour of the light coming through the glass panels in the roof, and the colour of the green marble floor is a hideous combination, and I think that many people feel that the previous arrangement, apart from the inadequacy of the air cleaning arrangements, was very much better.
I think that one of the ranges of objects of which the British Museum has a very poor collection is archaic Greek sculpture. I understand that such objects as it has are mostly from Asia Minor, from Lycia and not from Greece at all, and I think that it would be an excellent thing if the collection of archaic sculpture in the British Museum could be increased. The museums in Athens are full of objects from this period, some of which could possibly be spared.
I do not want to go into more detail about this. The Chief Secretary and the Government are well aware of the tremendous response there would be from our allies in Greece if we were to make a gesture, I believe even a limited gesture of the kind suggested in this debate.

Mr. Dugdale: Where does the hon. Gentleman think they should be put? In their original position in the Parthenon where they are difficult to see, or in another museum in Athens?

Mr. Noel-Baker: This would be a matter for the Greek archeological service to decide if and when such an arrangement was made. Whatever may have happened in the past, and particularly during the period of Turkish occupation, there is no doubt that today the Greek archeological service has all the knowledge, skill and facilities to look after as well as anybody else in the world could any antiquities which may be entrusted to it, and on this point I do not think that anyone concerned—and this includes the Greek archaeological service—would advocate putting the frieze back into its original position on


the ground of possible deterioration and on the ground of visibility.
This is a difficult question because it is hard to argue that the artists who created the Parthenon did not know where their works ought to be put, but many centuries have gone by, and perhaps we now have a different attitude to works of art that are displayed on Greek temples, and perhaps there is a case for having them somewhere else. If the frieze were to go back to Greece, which is not something that I have advocated, it would probably go into a museum, but objects like the column to which I have referred and the Caryatid would, I hope, go back to their original sites. When I asked the Prime Minister a Question on this subject on 9th May, 1961, he gave a long and apparently well-considered Answer. He said:
I will consider what the hon. Gentleman has said, but this is a complicated question and it can hardly be solved without careful consideration.
He went on to refer to the number of people seeing the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, and the number who would see the marbles on visiting the Acropolis. I was shaken by the figures quoted by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I do not think it can be claimed that more people are likely to visit those parts of the British Museum where the Elgin Marbles are kept than are likely to go to Greece, and certainly every foreign tourist who goes to Greece —and the number is increasing rapidly —visits the Acropolis and looks at the treasures that belong there.
The Prime Minister went on:
There is a problem and I will certainly not dismiss it from my mind, but this is a very important matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 9th May, 1961; Vol. 640. c. 222.]
When I wrote to him shortly after that exchange in the House he replied in a letter saying:
I have this matter in mind but I cannot go further than what I said on that occasion. As I said then, for reasons which are familiar to you this is a complicated question which can hardly be solved without careful consideration.
When this debate was approaching I ventured to write to the right hon. Gentleman again because I knew that

he had taken an interest not only in the question of the future of the Elgin Marbles, but also in the Bill, and he indicated what the Minister has said today about the necessity for special legislation. He said at the end of his letter that I might ask the Chief Secretary whether he would be prepared to discuss this question with a small deputation. I should like to ask the Chief Secretary whether he would be good enough to allow a group of people who are closely concerned with this matter —and I hope that perhaps the hon. Member for Bebington might feel disposed to join us—to meet him to discuss the question of the return of the Elgin Marbles. I am certain that if we were once able to make such a gesture it would be received with the greatest enthusiasm and satisfaction by our friends in Greece.
Perhaps I ought to add a brief word of personal explanation, partly because of one or two things recently written about me in the newspapers. I have a connection with Greece going back to very shortly after the Greek War of Independence. I am not partly Greek. I am not, incidentally, the largest landowner in Greece. I do not own 120,000 acres, and a number of other statements which were recently made about me in one of the Sunday newspapers were almost totally untrue. But I retain a connection which was established when my great-grandfather, who was a relative by marriage of Lord Byron, went to Greece shortly after the Greek War of Independence. We have a small farm which was treated in the same way as other property by successive Greek Governments in the matter of land reform, and some surrounding forests, and I am happy to continue to enjoy this connection. This is why I go to Greece often, why I am interested in this problem, why I have taken the liberty of discussing it privately with people in authority in Greece, and why I believe that they would make a generous response to any gesture we might be able to make from here with regard to the Elgin Marbles.
Like my hon. Friends, I give a qualified welcome to this Bill. The Chief Secretary referred to the fact that most of the money with which the Museum was originally established was raised from a national lottery, and he suggested


that it was incongruous that the Archbishop of Canterbury should have been the promoter of that lottery.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I never suggested that it was incongruous. I thought that it was a rather amusing historical reflection.

Mr. Noel-Baker: It was very amusing. I do not know what the present Archbishop of Canterbury would say to the suggestion that another national lottery might be run to increase the inadequate funds which are available both to the British Museum and to museums throughout the country. When one looks at the amount of money devoted to these purposes and compares it with what happens in some other countries, we do not come out of the comparison very well.
Earlier this afternoon reference was made to a recent report on social habits in this country, and to the enormous sums of money which are expended on the football pools and on other forms of gambling. I hope that before I leave the House of Commons football pools and related activities will be taken under public control as they have been elsewhere, and that part of the revenue derived from them will be devoted to matters like supporting museums and other artistic activities, and perhaps providing for playing fields and other sports facilities as well. At all events, I hope that the Economic Secretary will be able to say something about the financial implications not only of this Bill itself, which does not seem to have very serious financial implications, but of the plans for extending the Museum, for putting up a new building between Museum Street and Oxford Street, and the other changes it is proposed to make.

6.0 p.m.

Sir Cyril Black: At the risk of striking a slightly discordant note, in the light of what the two previous speakers have said, I express the very strong hope that those responsible will give serious consideration to all the implications before they decide to recommend parting with any of the priceless possessions of the Museum.
I do not want to develop an argument an the matter at any length. because that was not the aspect upon

which I wanted to speak, but it seems to me that at least two questions will have to be borne carefully in mind in regard to any such proposal as this. First, consideration should at least be given to the question whether our parting with any of these priceless objects might be a breach of trust, having regard to the circumstances under which they were donated to the Museum, and, secondly, if, in the case mentioned, the plea were acceded to, how many other cases might there be in respect of other objects in the Museum for which similar claims might be put forward by other nations and individuals?
I do not suggest that any of us should close his mind on the matter at this stage, without hearing further discussion, but I am sure that this suggestion involves great difficulties, and that we ought to give it careful consideration before reaching a decision.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise that the Bill is a good one as far as it goes, but a good deal of disappointment has been expressed that in various directions it does not go further, and that many matters to which reference has been made are not covered by the Bill. I want to deal briefly with what may appear to be a rather prosaic side of the matter, in comparison with some of the other topics which have emerged in the debate, but it has already been said that the Bill does not touch upon the pressing problem of the reform and improvement of the Museum's internal administration. That matter ought to receive consideration now that the affairs of the Museum are being debated.
There is so much that is nebulous about the present—

ROYAL ASSENT

6.3 p.m.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners:

The House went:—and, having returned:

Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Pensions (Increase) Act, 1962.
2. Expiring Laws Continuance Act, 1962.


3. Foreign Compensation Act, 1962.
4. Air Corporations Act, 1962.
5. Coal Industry Act, 1962.
6. Electricity (Borrowing Powers) (Scotland) Act, 1962.
7. Edinburgh Corporation Order Confirmation Act, 1962.
8. Paisley Corporation Order Confirmation Act, 1962.

BRITISH MUSEUM BILL

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

6.14 p.m.

Sir C. Black: As I was saying, when the interruption occurred, there is much that is nebulous about the present set-up of the administration and the staffing arrangements of the Museum, and this state of affairs is likely to continue unless the Bill is amended to deal with the situation.
Members of the Museum staff, although recruited through the Civil Service Commission, are often blissfully unaware that they are not civil servants and have next to no legal status or contract of service. As servants of the trustees under the Act of 1753, they cannot, at the same time, be servants of the Crown. Members of the staff are employed at the pleasure of the trustees. In the event of dismissal they have no statutory rights of natural justice and no statutory right of representation by a Civil Service or other professional organisation.
I submit that in any new legislation it should be made clear that the Museum staff should be on a parity with the scientific civil servants regarding conditions of service. Some members of the staff have worked for many years in the Museum without ever setting eyes on a trustee or seeing the director in their laboratories, and one cannot expect the rudiments of good personal relations in circumstances where no personal relations whatever exist.
I am referring now particularly to the Natural History Museum. I think that it must be obvious that much depends on the quality of the director. There has been a great deal of legitimate criticism of the method of appoint-

ment. There should be an advertisement when this position becomes vacant and open competition for the post and a more obvious and serious attempt made to find the best possible candidate for the position.
At the next lower level in the service of the Museum the selection of keepers and deputy-keepers of the departments depends far too much on the sacred principle of what has become to be known as "Buggins' turn". The working conditions in the Natural History Museum, of necessity, are rather strange. The scientist who works on, say, fish in the Museum finds that his professional colleagues and friends are the men who study fish in Washington, Leningrad, Capetown and Sydney.
Those in other parts of the Museum whose work relates to fleas or fungi are comparative strangers to him. It therefore follows that these people, by occupation and circumstances, are keen individualists, and the more original and distinguished they are in their scientific work the more difficult they are likely to be to manage.
Our friend "Dr. Buggins" may have spent thirty years looking down a microscope in his laboratory and may have earned international distinction through his learned researches. But in all probability he has received no schooling, and has no experience whatever, in administration and leadership. Thus, when the evil day comes and he is called away to assume control of his equally individualistic colleagues, it will be a surprise if he makes a success of the job. Much of the present trouble and low morale in the Natural History Museum is due to the failure to find, or even to seek, any solution to this problem of qualification for control.
I should like in this context to touch upon, in only a sentence or two, a still unresolved issue which has a grave bearing on the administration of the Natural History Museum and casts light on dark corners which require the attention of the Bill. In an Adjournment debate on 3rd February, 1961, I raised the case of my constituent, Dr. Denys Tucker, the principal scientific officer at the National Natural History Museum, who, in the summer of 1960, and only a few weeks after the appointment of a new director, was dismissed from the post which he


had held for eleven-and-a-half years. I do not propose—and I doubt whether I should be in order if I attempted to do so—to deal with that particular case at any length, but I invite hon. Members who may be interested in the administration of the Natural History Museum to read die report of that debate. I think that they cannot do so without a conviction that conditions in many respects in the administration and staffing are by no means all that they ought to be.
Since Dr. Tucker's dismissal, one of his colleagues, Dr. Peter Crowcroft, another constituent of mine, has resigned from his post in the Museum in protest and, several months later, accepted an invitation to become director of the South Australia Museum. Another, Dr. W. E. Swinton, has left to become head of the division of live sciences at the Royal Ontario Museum. At least five others are currently considering offers from overseas institutions. Conditions cannot be in all respects as they should be if this continuous exodus is taking place of men eminent in the scientific world who leave because they are dissatisfied with the conditions and circumstances of their employment at the Natural History Museum. It is common knowledge that the qualifications and experience of such scientists are in short supply in the world. I do not think this country can afford to lose these men, particularly for the reasons that they are leaving.
It is nonsense to maintain a Civil Service office in New York to persuade British scientists to return home while, at the same time, we maintain an establishment in South Kensington under conditions which drive them out. I do not want to take further time of the House, as I know other hon. Members wish to speak, but I ask my right hon. Friend to consider very carefully this aspect of the matter. It is not touched by the Bill, but the satisfactory staffing, administration and conduct of the day-to-day work of the Museum is all-important.
It must be clear from what I have said, and from any inquiry which could be held, that conditions are, and for a long time past have been, far from satisfactory. Unless this aspect of the matter, as well as those dealt with in the Bill, can be satisfactorily resolved we cannot hope to get the Museum in future that we want to have.

6.25 p.m.

Mr. Ede: I should like to make an explanation about the tribute, of which I am quite unworthy, which the Chief Secretary paid to me in listing the present trustees. I owe it to the House and to my colleagues who are trustees. When I became Home Secretary, in 1945, I had no idea that that would make me a trustee of the British Museum. I doubt whether many holders of the office have known that they would become trustees until they received the first notice to attend a meeting. I attended, and so did my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones), who was then Colonial Secretary.
We attended the next meeting and I was unwise enough to utter one sentence at that second meeting. It so happened that the then Speaker of the House, Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown, was present. He said, "I am glad to see that you take an interest in this work. It would be a very great advantage to the Standing Committee of the trustees if you would join them so that their views could be made known in the Cabinet." Foolishly, I consented. The time came when the country was fated to be less-well governed and I disappeared from the Home Office, but my colleagues on the Standing Committee paid me the very great compliment of suggesting to the electing trustees that now I was no longer an ex-officio trustee I should be appointed a trustee.
That occurred on 31st January, 1952, and in May of that year I reappeared on the Standing Committee by the election of the general body of trustees. That is all there is in it and at the moment I do two unfortunate things. I increase the average age of the trustees by my presence and considerably lower their standing in the realms in which they more specifically dwell. From time to time I utter a word of warning that something which is proposed would not live for two minutes in this House. I suggest that it is desirable, in view of the part which this House plays, and will have to continue to play in the work of the Museum, that there should be some connection between the Cabinet and the Standing Committee of what in future will be the body of trustees so that public opinion can be voiced at a reasonably early stage on some of the matters which arise.
As a trustee, I have been in the negotiations on this Bill. They originated with the Prime Minister. I think that one or two of the points with which he wished to deal were well worth raising. The appointment of a trustee ought not to be a life appointment. The fixing of the time limit under the Bill with some slight elasticity is a good thing. My colleagues —I believe that I speak for all of them —on the Standing Committee do not like the separation of the two new museums. I join with them in that because I feel that the idea that one set of people in the country are interested in the humanities and another set are interested in the sciences, and that the two live in quite different worlds, is one of the dangers we have to face in the age in which we live.
While science plays a bigger part in our life than it did before 1860, and while it undoubtedly influences opinion more than it did then, there are still the great abiding humanities and the ancient civilisations which so largely still form our own way of thinking. That ought to be borne in mind by the scientists and some of the people who appear to have lost interest in humanity somewhere just after the fall of Rome, and who have constantly before them some of the questions which are raised by the predominantly scientific outlook of the present age. I hope that in making the appointments of the trustees at least there will be some distinguished men who will be on both bodies, because then, at least, the two cultures will be recognised.
I join with the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) in recognising that there are some things which are quite archaic about the administration of the Museum. A body which was established in 1753, which still derives most of its powers from an Act of 1753, and which, at one time, included one duke and several other members of the peerage, as the Minister mentioned, obviously ought to be able to slough off some of the accumulation of a couple of centuries.
I hope that we can decide whether the servant of the Museum is a civil servant or is not. This question has come before us very acutely. Two Lord Chancellors have given the opinion that they do not know. Law Officers of the Crown have said the same thing. Lord Radcliffe, who is a trustee, at a trustee's meeting,

after examining the question, said that he did not know. It is not often that we get as many distinguished lawyers as that to agree on anything, particularly to agree that they do not know. I can see no reason why a statement should not be made on this subject during the course of the proceedings on the Bill.
I want to make this comment on the specific case raised by the hon. Member for Wimbledon: while we could not determine, in the eyes of the lawyers, whether we were dealing with a civil servant or not, we took good care to see that the rules of natural justice were applied. As chairman of the sub-committee which had one of the final decisions to make, and who has received a great deal of abuse ever since, I will say, as one who has often had to attend tribunals as a friend of a member of a union, that I am quite certain that the procedure was followed on that occasion most carefully. I am prepared to defend the decision which was reached on any relevant occasion on the ground that natural justice was applied and was observed.
The Bill clears out of the way all past legislation. When we come to the point raised by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, which is not concerned with the statutes in the Fourth Schedule to the Bill but with the way in which the place is run, there are what are called Museum statutes, which are rules for the conduct of the two museums, which have been laid down in the past and are observed in the day-to-day administration of it. They are not affected by the Bill.
But for the first time the trustees in future will have the power thoroughly to revise all those statutes and to remove those which are quite archaic. I was told once—I never took the trouble to verify how far it went—that on a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on which a Member of the other place was present, he would take the chair. If two of them turned up, the senior in rank would take the chair. For example, in the days mentioned by the Minister, if a duke turned up he would be in the chair, and I suppose that if he were not there the marquess would take the chair, and so on, right down, until in the end, in these days, we might get landed with a life peer in the chair.
Obviously, that relates to a condition of affairs which we have long since abandoned in the ordinary social and administrative life of the country, and I welcome the greater freedom which future trustees will have in being able to control the affairs of the Museum in the light of statutes which they themselves can draft and apply, and I wish them every success in their efforts in that respect.
I also share the feeling that Prime Ministers' appointments are rather overdone in the two Clauses of the Bill in which they are mentioned, and I should welcome the opportunity of seeing more of the learned societies making nominations, and other bodies likely to be interested in the work of the Museum also being entitled so to do.
The hon. Member for Wimbledon mentioned the question of how many evenings a week the Reading Room was open. For years the trustees have been willing to provide the staff and the facilities for the Museum Reading Room to be open on at least five evenings a week, but they cannot get from the Treasury the staff to deal with it. After all, even learned and erudite people, as are most of the staff of the Museum, are entitled to have a reasonable working day when they are giving their minds to their profession, and it will involve some increase in staff.
With the great extension of opportunities for study in this country in such services as university extension lectures, there may be many people who are voluntarily undertaking that form of further education who want to look up their references and to check in the reading room some of the things which they have heard; and unless they are free on the two nights which are now available, they are denied that opportunity.
I hope that the Government will consider even including the Workers' Educational Association, who do a great deal in the extra-mural activities of the universities, among the bodies who are allowed to nominate one member, so that the interests of this body of working students, who are carrying on their ordinary avocations during the day, may be appropriately represented when their interests are under discussion.
One considerable advantage arises from the Bill if the powers given under

it are wisely used. At the moment, once an object gets into the British Museum on the north side of Great Russell Street, it cannot be moved out of it to any other place. It is proposed to build the new library on the south side of Great Russell Street, but we are in the unfortunate position that at the moment we cannot move anything from the north side to the south without breaking the law.
On occasions of national emergency, such as a war, it is sometimes necessary to move very considerable parts of the contents of the Museum to remote parts of the country to ensure that they are in reasonably safe positions, because many of the objects are priceless as objects of the Museum's attention. There is a power in the Bill—it was in the negotiations on the Bill from the first, even before the Prime Minister appeared on the scene—as regards the recognition of other places as receptacles for some of the contents of the Museum.
I am sometimes astounded in the range of interest in the Museum. People from the Dominions and from foreign countries come to London merely to see some object which is in the collection or to consult one of the books. It is highly desirable that such people should know exactly where to find what they want to see. When we were dealing with the first point that I mentioned, we were faced with a problem of where we could find storage places for objects which are not often required, but with a collection as miscellaneous as this the Museum never knows what will be asked for.
A person from the Dominions or some part of Europe or from the United States comes to London and wants to see an object. He goes to the British Museum. If he is wise he will write two or three days before, saying what it is that he wants to see. If the object is stored too far away, it may be some time before the Museum is able to put him in touch with the object he, has come, sometimes several thousands of miles, to see and in which he has a genuine interest, which is evinced by the fact that he has come such a distance to see one object.
I hope that in designating new repositories care will be taken to ensure that they are not too far away from the existing museums. I suggested that


they should be within the Metropolitan Police district, or somewhere within a certain radius of London. Then, either the object could be brought to the Museum for the student to see, or he could be given a note to the keeper of the depository which would enable him to see the object where it was being stored. I hope that some limitation will be placed upon the radius from London within which these further depositories may be sited.
One Clause of the Bill has caused a great deal of trouble. I refer to Clause 5 (1, c) dealing with objects which may be disposed of. The trustees have the power of disposal if
(c) the object is in the opinion of the Trustees unfit to be retained in the collections of the Museum.
The word "unfit" is very general. Some people might want to apply some form of censorship to its exercise.
The case of material in the Natural History Museum which has been infested with parasites is easy to recognise. The condition of a book may become so bad merely physically that it ought no longer to be on the shelves of the Museum. There are some people who are not concerned about the physical condition of a book. They are concerned with what is printed in it. I hope that we shall be able to find some form of words to enable us to ensure that this phrase in the Clause will not present an opportunity for a veiled form of censorship.
I regret that we still find from Clause 6 that we are entirely in the clutches of the Treasury. The Clause contains these expressions:
subject to such conditions as the Treasury may direct"—
and—
such salaries, allowances and other remuneration as the Treasury may determine.
The hon. Member for Wimbledon quoted examples of people who have gone to Dominion museums. I do not regret their going merely because of the loss that we sustained, because I think that a great Museum like this is bound to provide suitable persons of experience for some of the very considerable appointments in the Dominions and in America. What I regret is that the salaries we are allowed by the Treasury to pay are so inadequate that it is

almost certain that a post in the Dominions, and particularly in America, will attract such people to leave the service of this country and go overseas.
In Committee, many of the points which have been raised today will have to receive very serious consideration. I support the general idea behind the Bill, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not be surprised when I say that in my view some of the details need to be examined very carefully. I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which the Government have consulted the present trustees at each stage in the formulation of the Bill. It is not to be expected that the right hon. Gentleman and myself, on all subjects, will ever be in agreement, but we managed to get near enough to agreement to be able to say that the principles in the Bill are agreed between the Government and the trustees and that on the details, about which there are differences, there should still be room for accommodation between one side and the other.

6.48 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: I welcome the provisions of the Bill generally. I want right away to take up the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) on one point. I do not share his view that this country has lost from the British Museum and other museums the leading experts in the arts.

Mr. Ede: I did not say that.

Mr. Rees-Davies: The right hon. Gentleman said that we were in danger of doing so. I do not think that we are. I do not think that high salaries attract the men with this talent. If they wanted to, they could, with the talents that many of them possess, make gigantic fortunes as private collectors.

Mr. Ede: I am not at all sure that it is not the effect on the wife. The wife's influence over the husband is sometimes unnecessarily strong.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I cannot speak for the National History Museum, or for the natural talents of women, but I have some little knowledge of at least those who serve in what one might call the more applied and fine arts. What I shall say this evening relates mainly to that aspect.
We have had an interesting debate and I make no apology for saying that I intend to break entirely fresh ground in the things I have to say. I want, first, to look at the functions of the Bill and see just what are its aims. There is nothing in the Bill which seeks to define the character, scope and extent of the British Museum. I entirely disagree with the view that one should try to correlate the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the other. I dissent from that view entirely.
The world of the arts today is becoming very professional. There are not many people with wide knowledge of the different aspects of art, but there are certain things about this country and its heritage, one of the greatest being that we have some of the finest collections of different arts in the world. Easily the most shocking example to show that heritage off is the British Museum. There can be no gainsaying that in the British Museum we have the greatest African and primitive art collections and probably the finest collection of Oriental art.
Neither of these two magnificent heritages is shown at all. Indeed, the whole question of African and primitive art is a complete and utter disgrace. It is tucked away at the bottom below Benin and other bronzes, and is not shown at all. I make that criticism in no destructive sense because in everything I say I mean to be helpful so that we will achieve betterment and contentment among those who have the difficulty of working in very difficult conditions; and all of this does not necessarily require the expenditure of vast sums of money.
Not everything—and I know that what I am about to say will probably be contrary Ito the views of everyone else—that America does is wrong. I agree that most of the things that the Americans do are wrong, but not everything. I believe profoundly that in working towards the proper presentaton, collation and handling of the arts, they lead the world. Those of us who have had the opportunity of visiting and examining the structure of museums and the method of operation in the United States cannot fail to have been deeply impressed by the measure of success that they have achieved.
We must remember that they have been achieved not by the expenditure

of any State money, but simply because of the great personal patrons of America; great men like Frick, Mellon, and others, and by the generosity—one might even call it the desire to achieve fame through their wealth by setting up great collections—of wealthy people who have given the opportunity to the American people generally to be able to see what the rest of the world sought to save for themselves.
How are we to achieve those things? That is the theme of my speech tonight. What dominates the British Museum—and I am speaking about men for whom I have the greatest respect, for I know many of them and some are my friends and I must, therefore, tread warily because, when speaking on this subject, one is dealing with the heart of the establishment of Britain—is the library, for it is the dominating factor. Over 70 keepers have the task of keeping the library, while I believe that about 15 or 20 other keepers deal with the rest of the Museum, lock stock and barrel.
Of prime importance is to get the library into its splendid new building and away from the rest as soon as possible. The greatest thing that the Government could do to start off a real understanding of the whole question of the arts is to hurry up and complete the building for the National Library, although I agree that it is right that it should remain as the British Museum. Having done that one must then consider the balance.
Whether or not one calls it part of the British Museum or gives it an entirely separate title I know and care not, but I want to see the creation of an Oriental museum. We have the greatest Oriental collection and people who want to see magnificent Tang horses and superb early sculpture from India and Japan want to be able to go to one museum for that purpose and not have to make various journeys to scattered places.
I want to know, for example, whether the format of the Bill requires, under the Clause which deals with it, a separate Treasury Order to come back to Parliament or, when the library is set up, it can create an Oriental museum automatically. Is that possible under the terms of the Bill? Whether or not the Minister agrees with me is beside the point, but the Bill should ensure that


if the trustees come to the conclusion, in due course, that there should be a separate Oriental museum, they will be able to establish one without having to come to the House of Commons for further legislation.
When considering our collection of African art, the state of affairs and the way it is exhibited is deplorable. Many people—and this was the only part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Mr. R. Thompson) with which I disagreed; and I know that he served in the Ministry of Public Building and Works with distinction in this field—have different tastes. I disagreed with my hon. Friend when he said that the trustees had done the right and most important things. That entirely depends on what one collects and likes.
Many people may think that the most important things are connected with Leonardo da Vinci while others may prefer Benin. There are people who consider that great examples of primitive art are more important than the greatest Impressionist paintings and, therefore, it is important to realise that different people have different tastes and ideas. So it is just as important to some people that there should be a superb presentation of primitive and African art.
In New York there is a Museum of Primitive Art, to which parties of people are invited to attend when in that city. There is also a great museum of modern art connected with the great name of Rockefeller. There they are, cheek by jowl, one across the road from the other. One is smaller than the other. One has a great deal of money while the other has much less. The Museum of Modern Art is wealthy while the Museum of Primitive Art is not.
In the British Museum, in this tremendous colossus, we have some of the world's greatest collections. They are kept in one great morass, so that the public cannot quickly and easily get around to see the items which they would like to see. Why is it that the Tate Gallery is packed and the British Museum is empty? The reason is that the Tate has some understanding of presentation. It is not the fault of the keepers of the British Museum that they cannot have this presentation and it is

not wholly a question of money. It is largely a question of the architecture, the structure of the British Museum and the way the thing is set out.
To do the job properly one must, so to speak, have separate entities and set out one's presentation. And to get this presentation one must get new patrons. I suggest, therefore, that same provision should be made in the Bill to ensure that people may become patrons of the British Museum; and not trustees. For the trustees there must be some link with this House but, fundamentally, the people who run museums—and I am on the side of the pro's against the amateurs—are really the enthusiastic amateurs who take a genuine interest in the great collections, as in America.
The great museum in Philadelphia has a president who is a well-known lawyer. I had the pleasure of staying with him when I was in the United States to attend the American Bar Convention and that gentleman, although a well-known lawyer, spent much of his time devoted to the patronage of the arts. As I say, the wealthy people in that country who are so inclined are free to become patrons of museums. They pay a subscription, and I believe that many of the great industries in this country and the leaders of industry might like to lend their names to becoming patrons of some particular part of our museums. Some of them might be on the natural history side, concerned, perhaps, with industries which are affected by natural history, while some who have talents in the fine arts might like to assist in having their names as patrons associated with the British Museum.
I hope that, in that way, with the influence of the amateur associated with the skill of the professional, we may be able to get the first-class amenities which we so desperately need. I can give examples of this need. It is very difficult for those who are beginners to get knowledge quickly and easily. In the fine arts one can only get knowledge by looking. It is only by living in museums almost daily and by going to auction rooms, or to fine collections, or whatever it is, that one can get the professional eye.
Young people want to be experts quickly. None of our museums has the


facilities, accepted throughout the United States, to enable a person to put on headphones and, by paying 6d., listen to a lecture in the room, giving the details. Walkie-talkie and wireless sets are used in that connection. There is no public relations department in the British Museum of which I am aware which enables television to be able to bring the T.V. cameras right into the Museum, as, for example, is regularly done in Boston, Massachusetts.
If we turn to another field, it is essential that we should be able to lay out all the arts particularly if one is handling furniture and other fine arts. When one is handling furniture, silver, porcelain, or glass for goodness' sake put them into one room to show the century to which they belong. Then women can understand what they are looking at. There are very few rooms for this in the British Museum, although there is to some extent in the Victoria and Albert in the way in which one can find them in the Frick collection, where one can go from room to room and see period by period.
We have to try to modernise our approach. We have, therefore, to set up a structure in the Bill which will ensure such modernisation. There is a very real feeling among the young people of today particularly to want to enjoy every kind of art. Goodness knows, they will not be able to own them, at prices at which they are today, or at least not many of them, but they may perhaps be given the opportunity to be able to go not as a penance to the British Museum, but as a pleasure.
This is what we have to achieve. I do not believe that the Treasury will hold back the money—because I rather take the view that the officials in the Treasury are, on the whole, a rather intellectual bunch of people who try to help the arts, although they may not succeed. I may be wrong in this, but I am bound to say that there is a lot of good common sense in the C.P.C. pamphlet called "The Government and the Arts", which has been written by four of my hon. Friends on this side of the House, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Sir H. Kerr).
I think that the day is coming when, because of the money which the House

may have to give, there will have to be some real control and infinitely greater co-ordination under the Ministry of Public Building and Works and it may be that people from the Treasury and Ministry of Education, who have been associated with the arts, may have to be seconded or even upgraded in the development in the Ministry of Public Building and Works so that we can co-ordinate these things.
It may well be that my hon. Friend ought to be Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fine Arts. It probably will come without having to interfere with many of the great extra statutory duties which lie on great bodies like the Arts Council and many others. In this matter of the Museum it has now been clearly decided by Her Majesty's Government that the Treasury shall retain the power. If it does I hope that we shall not have quite as many trustees as 25; I think that that is too many. I think that there can be too many differences of opinion between the powers that be, and I would have preferred to have seen a settlement for 15 and no more.
I would prefer the structure of the number set up by the Natural History Museum, but when the structure has been strengthened and we are sure that it is flexible enough to have separate museums, under the heading of the British Museum, then let us see that we can ensure that these men, working in their own field, with, perhaps, subcommittees of the trustees, will be enabled to get in this country the type of presentation which the public will enjoy so that the Bill, which gets rid of all the archaic anomalies of the past, will be the foundation of what I believe will be one of the greatest future industries in this country—the tourist industry. That will happen, I believe.
I believe that that will happen before many years are passed. We have to ensure that people not only throughout England but throughout the world will come to this great metropolis because we shall not only have the greatest collections to show, but the unrivalled talent of showing them to their best effect.

7.5 p.m.

Dr. Barnett Stross (Stoke-on-Tront, Central): The right hon. Gentleman, who introduced this small Bill with his usual


facility and grace, will have noted, as we discussed it, that it will obviously get a Second Reading, although everyone has criticised one or other of its provisions and hopes that improvement can be effected in Committee.
I read in the Preamble of the first enactment which led to the British Museum being created—the one in 1753 —these words:
Whereas all arts and sciences having connection with each other".
Those are the first words in the Preamble, and today, in this Bill, we are to divorce the sciences from the arts by separating the two sections of the British Museum. In principle most of us think that this is a mistake—that it is wrong.
So much is the education of the country becoming specialised that we are all aware of the danger that men may not be able to communicate with each other. They have no method of understanding each other's functions in life or what their professional interests mean to them. This has been made apparent in the speech of more than one hon. Member. We do not want another Tower of Babel in this age of ours, and we ought to do everything possible on principle to say that we do not accept a divorcement between the arts and the sciences.
Our new universities are all moving towards the acceptance of this. For example, in North Staffordshire, in the four-year course at the Keele University, the first year is called the foundation year. Everyone must pass in that first year at his first attempt. That year is spent studying the root of our common civilisation. After that, any subject used for specialisation must be supported by a secondary subject in an entirely different sphere—an opposite sphere. If science is being read, there must be a subsidiary subject in the arts, at a slightly lower level of attainment. If we are doing this in all our new universities and accepting it in our older ones, too, it seems a great pity that in this Bill we are separating the Natural History Museum from the British Museum. Where that is concerned, I am at odds with the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies).
I would add only this to what I have just said. Has the right hon. Gentleman

noted that the science library is to stay with the parent organisation? It will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, science reference libraries in the world. If we are separating the two institutions, it seems strange that we are retaining the science reference library with the art side of the British Museum. Moreover, as time goes by, more and more of the people who will work at Bloomsbury will be recruited from the ranks of the scientists, because the preservation, conservation and labelling of material more and more needs the assistance of the scientist. That seems to be an added argument for not separating the two sections.
Enough has been said about the creation of the two trustee bodies and the excessive patronage of the Prime Minister, so I need not say anything about that at all, but my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) has warned us that the word "unfit" in Clause 5 (1, c) to describe objects which may be sold, exchanged, given away or otherwise disposed of is perhaps rather dangerous.
The fact that there is an explanation of the word in the Explanatory Memorandum does not help us at all, because that explanation will not matter when it comes to interpretation. The Explanatory Memorandum speaks of objects found to be forgeries or wrongly identified—that is fine. If the objects are rotten, they are also unfit, as they are when riddled with worm, or infested, but we have all read—

Mr. Fletcher: My hon. Friend speaks with approval of getting rid of objects found to be forgeries, but does he not realise that, for instance, in ecclesiastical history, at any rate, some of the most important documents of antiquity are forgeries, but to students of history they are no less important than genuine books?

Dr. Stross: My hon. Friend should not address that question to me but to the Economic Secretary. It may well be that for historical reasons a forgery may, in certain circumstances, be more exiting than the original—I do not know. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend will get an opportunity to make his point in a few moments.
As I was about to say, we all know that there was great controversy as to whether or not the Elgin Marbles were by Phideas. Evidence was given before a Select Committee that they were not by Phideas but were late Roman work by some sculptors at the time of Hadrian. That evidence was accepted for quite a long time, but was later controverted, and we now all know that in all probability they have nothing to do with the time of Hadrian but are genuine works of the 5th century B.C. by Phideas. I know that it is a sort of lunatic effort, but suppose that at some time in the future a lot of people changed their minds acid the critics agreed that the Elgin Marbles were not by Phideas. Are they then to be thought of as "unfit"—that is why I am so afraid of this word—and then let my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) have his way, and give them back to Athens?
I am very nervous about both Clauses 4 and 5. As long as our trustees remain stable and sane, I am sure that they will not do anything so stupid as to give these great Marbles back, because we know perfectly well that if they had not been bought by Elgin they would probably not now be available for anybody in the world. At the time of the purchase, the Elgin Marbles were being used by the Turkish garrison soldiers for target practice. Again, tourists thought nothing of chopping off a hand or a foot or a nose, or any fragment, and taking it home. Further, the Athenians themselves at the time made no resistance to the transaction, and showed very little, if any, interest in the Marbles at all.
If they were to be returned, would they go back to where they originally came from, or would they be put into a museum? Most people think that they would be put into a museum. Well, we have them in a museum where they are very likely to be seen by more people than would see them in a museum in Athens. They were legitimately bought, and there can be no excuse whatever for sending them back—

Mr. Rees-Davies: I share the hon. Member's view about giving them back but, in this sphere and in others, it would not be wrong, would it, in the discretion of the trustees, to exchange objects or, indeed, to lend objects for a period of years provided that the trans-

action would not damage the object being lent? Would not the hon. Gentleman agree with that?

Dr. Stross: Lending is very different from exchanging. If we are to start exchanging things, who will bequeath anything any more to the great institutions? They will not do so. To lend for a strictly limited period is another matter.
One of the things of which we should be most proud is the freedom of access to this institution, and to others, without charge. Italy used to allow people to enter its museums without charge but today there is a charge, which means that Italian people of the working class —and they are the majority of the people in that country—are too often denied, both fox themselves and their children, access to treasures in their own country. I think that our method is infinitely better.
I want to reinforce the plea that the Treasury should immediately find the money necessary to let students go to the British Museum on five nights a week, and not on two nights as at present. Originally, it was open until 9.30 p.m., but it is now limited to 9 o'clock on those two nights a week, because 9.30 is rather late if the staff are to be able to return to homes some miles away. But what possible excuse can there be to deny citizens who have to work for their living during the day the right to pursue research, and to educate themselves, on five evenings a week?
What nonsense it is to have this enormously expensive piece of machinery, unique in the world, and yet to deny people this access. I am told that on the present two nights a week, between 175 and 225 people are to be found there. What little extra cost will it mean to enable so many hundreds more to go there on the other nights? I would not press for it to be open on Saturday nights—there is a limit to what we must expect from staff—but the extra money should be found to enable it to be open for the five nights for which the Trustees have been begging for the last two years, and having their plea denied. I hope that the Economic Secretary will give an answer on that point, because we all feel very strongly about it. It is the taxpayers' money that supports this


expensive, unique and marvellous institution. It should be used as fully as possible.

7.18 p.m.

Mr. Austin Albu: I want to refer very briefly to the Natural History Museum and to the National Science Reference Library. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross), who spoke so eloquently about the two cultures, drew attention to the fact that, for the first time, the Natural History Museum is to be separated from the British Museum, although the title is still retained. Ever since 1881 the two have been attached by a rather thin umbilical cord, which has now been broken.
The question whether the trustees should be the same or separate is a practical one, and it does not involve us in great philosophical arguments. The practical question is not only that of the best way of running one body concerned, as my hon. Friend was concerned, with arts, and another with sciences, but also that, in running them, remembering that each has two functions—to be places for the exhibition of objects and places of research.
The balance between the two institutions varies. In the British Museum itself, the exhibition of objects is partly for scientific reasons—archaeological, and so on—while the exhibition of objects in the Natural History Museum is entirely scientific. The practical question is how to get the best body of trustees. There may be a case, although I cannot see it very strongly, for some overlapping of trustees.
There is a good deal of misunderstanding about the Natural History Museum. Since the time when it moved to South Kensington, it has seen great development particularly in the field of scientific research. Today, I understand that it is only 10 per cent, a museum whereas it is 90 per cent. a research institute for natural history and biology. In these fields, it has a worldwide reputation as a research institutio. It has among its staff people who are absolutely the top men in the world in their research subjects.
During the last twelve years, the staff at the Natural History Museum has increased by 43 per cent. In addition,

there is a very substantial number of part-time scientists working there. On top of that, the Museum has many visitors who come there to work and do research from universities and institutions at home and abroad.
The Natural History Museum—perhaps this is a matter of greater interest to the Treasury, because it is seen to be something of a revenue-earning body as well as a spending body—does work which has substantial practical results. It receives many inquiries and conducts a great number of researches for the public health authorities. Such work is done in the department of zoology and the department of entomology. The department of palaeontology does a good deal of work in connection with overseas geological surveys, particularly in Commonwealth countries, and also it makes a substantial economic contribution to the oil companies by helping them to know when to stop deep drilling in their explorations.
At present, this Museum, like the main part of the British Museum, is very short of space. The hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) says that he did not think it was question of money, but went on to say that the buildings were out of date. I did not quite understand how he could reconcile those two comments because, if one wants new buildings or substantial changes in existing buildings, the museums must have more money. The Natural History Museum certainly needs more money very badly. It needs a new wing for its zoology and entomology departments. It needs the completion of its new block for palaeontology and mineralogy.
Hon. Members have criticised the fact that the Museum, like some other institutions, is directly, or through its trustees, responsible to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am not quite sure whether it would be better somewhere else, although I think that there is a case, as was said by one or two hon. Members, for transferring it. One or two hon. Members have put the case for it being, for instance, under the Minister of Public Building and Works, who is now responsible for what one might call the national exhibition of buildings throughout the country. What is absolutely essential, however, whichever Government Department is finally responsible


for it, is that the trustees—this is the real point about the trustees—should have a genuine and keen interest in the work which these institutions carry out. It is not necessary, nor, I think, possible that the trustees should all be experts in all the fields in which the Natural History Museum works, but they should have a love and understanding of the work as well as a wide, general practical experience. Only in that way will they be in a position to feel strongly enough to put up the case for more money to the Treasury.
I remember the former Minister of Education, now Lord Eccles, twitting the universities with having nobody to to put the case for them in the Cabinet because they had to go direct to the Treasury, He said, "I fight for the schools and the colleges of technology". It is extremely important to have a strong and keen body of trustees who will fight for money for the museums. If they do not understand the value of the work, particularly the research work which goes on as well as the museum side of it, they will be unlikely to put up a case sufficiently strongly and well to the Treasury.
I agree with those who have said that we ought to consider in Committee whether some of the professional bodies and associations should be represented among the trustees. I think of the Institute of Biology, the Royal Entomological Society, the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and so on. I like the suggestion made, I think, by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) that there should a representative of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors.
Particularly in the case of the Natural History Museum, the Minister for Science should have almost a statutory say, or even a statutory right of appointment. I say frankly that I am surprised that the Parliamentary Secretary for Science is not here. We are dealing with an institution which is intimately concerned with scientific research. I should have expected the hon. Gentleman to be present in the House.
I pass now from the Natural History Museum, to which I wish all the best of luck in its new independence—though there will not be all that difference if it

does not get the money—and I tarn to the National Science Reference Library. This is the direct interest, almost the direct responsibility, in a way, though not the statutory responsibility, of the Minister for Science. We had a debate about it on 14th March, 1961. I put a number of questions to the Parliamentary Secretary for Science, not all of which were answered. There were at that time some anxieties about the general control of the library by the authorities of the British Museum.
I think that the main anxieties were about the possible duplication of interest. The library serves the purpose of being the library for the Patent Office, which is the responsibility of the Board of Trade, and it undoubtedly will be the most important scientific reference library in the country, and, therefore, should interest the Minister for Science. Of course, it will now be part of the British Museum collection; the British Museum already has got part of it.
There was a good deal of anxiety also about the separation of the two parts of the library, the current books and periodicals, which will be situated on the South Bank and the non-current, which will often be referred to, of course, and need to be referred to quickly, which are to be maintained at Bloomsbury. I want to be absolutely certain that these matters are being fully considered.
I say at once that, from all 1 have heard, there seems to be general agreement that the plans produced for the library under Sir Frank Francis have been developing very satisfactorily, but there is concern that what we are now doing is creating a permanent arrangement and people want to be absolutely certain that, whoever the authorities of the British Museum may be in the future, they will continue to take an interest and have as good a realisation of its function as the present authorities have. I suggest, therefore, that there is reason for some strengthening of the scientific and technological side of the trustees of the British Museum. This may well be necessary under the new arrangement.
Do not the research councils have an interest in this matter? It is very important to realise that the library serves a very specialised purpose. It makes an enormous contribution to industry, and this contribution will undoubtedly


greatly increase in future. This is, I think, a slightly uneasy cuckoo in the nest of the British Museum. I should never suggest that the British Museum library should not hold on its shelves every book which is published, but there is no logical reason why a specialised library like the National Science Reference Library should be in the British Museum. I emphasise again that no one is unhappy about what has been taking place during the past few months, but those concerned with the library want to be absolutely certain that the interests of the users of the library for what is a very specialised purpose will be looked after in the future.
Having said all that, I, like my hon. Friends, give a qualified welcome to the Bill. Like all small Bills, its effect will depend entirely on the energy and enthusiasm which the Government finally apply to its principles, and this, in the end, whatever the hon. Gentleman opposite may say, comes down to interest and money.

7.29 p.m.

Mr. Niall MacDermot: I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) has spoken so knowledgeably and interestingly about the Natural History Museum, because I was getting a little anxious about the fact that it has been mentioned so little in the debate. As one who read recently the intresting collection of essays published by Sir Gavin de Beer, who was until fairly recently Director of this Museum, I was aware that such interesting matters should be brought to the attention of the House, but I did not feel competent to do it.
I wish to raise a point which has not been dealt with so far. It concerns Clause 4 and the new power to lend objects. I am surprised that there has not been more discussion on this point. I do not know whether the numbering of the Clause led to hesitation on the part of my hon. Friends, but it seems to me that this is a matter which may give rise to very great difficulty. I confess that I am torn both ways on this subject. On the one hand, I want to see more loan exhibitions in provincial centres: on the other hand, I am very concerned about the safety of irreplaceable art treasures.
I know how starved the provinces are of their fair share of our artistic heritage, too much of which is concentrated in London. I know that those provincial galleries which make a practice of arranging loan exhibitions do a very great service. I think particularly of the Cecil Higgins Museum at Bedford which other members of the Bar and I, going to Bedford on circuit, have found a most pleasurable place to visit because there is nearly always an interesting loan exhibition on view there. Most of those exhibitions come from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The interest to be weighed in the balance against that is the safety of art treasures. I am a little anxious about the wide powers being given and to whom they are being given under the Bill. At present, the British Museum has power to loan objects if they are duplicate books or manuscripts or objects for public exhibition in any gallery in Britain under the control of a public authority or university. Even with this limited power, I do not think that people realise the risks, danger and damage which may result. This is not something which gets publicity.
I do not wish to mention particular exhibitions, but I understand that within the last few years valuable works of art which have been loaned from the British Museum for public exhibition no further afield than London—they have been moved only from one part of London to another have been returned to the British Museum in a damaged condition. Here we are concerned with the loan of objects for exhibition not merely in London or in this country but in any part of the world.
I could quote a few other examples to illustrate the dangers that I have in mind. A committee of art experts and chemists met in London about 1950 under the auspices of U.N.E.S.C.O. to consider the position about ikons. It found that the amount of movement of ikons that had taken place for loan purposes had caused very serious permanent damage to the ikons.
Another example is the Indian Art Exhibition which hon. Members may have seen in this country in the years shortly after the war. It was probably the finest exhibition of Indian art ever held. The articles, I believe, were brought


to this country by the Royal Navy. At some stage in their journey—I do not know where it happened—a railway truck containing exhibits for the exhibition broke free from the train, ran away and was involved in an accident with serious damage resulting to some of the art treasures. I do not think that this received publicity at the time because those organising exhibitions naturally do not want to publicise the risks attendant on transporting art treasures across the world.
I remember having a conversation with the late Professor Thomas Bodkin, one of the most fascinating talkers on the subject of art that there has ever been. He was the director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at Birmingham. He told me how he had been prevailed upon, rather against his will, to loan some of the finest pictures in that collection for an exhibition on the Continent. The pictures were duly returned to this country, hut, owing to some administrative misunderstanding, they were held up for a long time by the Customs in this country.
It is not merely a matter of protecting works of art against physical damage and against the possibility of someone battering them. They have to be kept at the right temperature. Temperature and humidity can do permanent damage to works of art. Professor Bodkin told me that after had had rushed down to 'the coast—he was a man of considerable energy and initiative—he managed to get them released quickly, after pulling strings at a very high level. He said that this experience firmly persuaded him that never again would he lend any of the works of art under his control for exhibition.
I believe that there is real concern among some of the staff in the British Museum about the provision which we are being asked to pass in Clause 4 which would give the trustees the power to lend for public exhibition, whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, any object comprised in the collections of the Museum. There is a proviso saying that, in deciding whether or not to lend, the trustees shall have regard to various interests.
Which body should decide this question? Should it be the trustee's or the keepers? My view is that in a matter

of this kind those who have the knowledge are the people to take the responsible decision. The keepers at the British Museum have a tremendous sense of responsibility. They believe that their task is to preserve this most wonderful heritage from the past for future generations. They and they alone are the people who are able to judge the risks attendant on lending works of art for exhibition here and abroad.
One can see at once the risks involved in allowing non-technical people to decide this question. The Mona Lisa, which is being transferred to America, is a vivid illustration of this. That action was taken in face of the unanimous contrary advice of all the experts of the Louvre and of the French Academy. They were all overruled by political decisions. I think it scandalous that a work of art like that should be transferred across the world against the advice of all the experts, particularly to serve an ephemeral political purpose. I do not think that politicians have the right to deal with works of art in that way and for that purpose.
We can see what will happen if this kind of decision is to he left to trustees. We all hope to see as a result of the Bill an expansion of our museums and museum service. We also hope to see great improvements in display and in the organisation of exhibitions. No doubt our trustees will develop very close and friendly relations with the trustees of comparable museums and bodies abroad. We realise the sort of pressures that will develop. One will say to the other, "You lend us some of your works of art for our exhibition and we will lend you some of our works of art for your exhibition." Perhaps there will not be political considerations such as that to which I referred just now concerning the Mona Lisa, but there will be strong pressures on the trustees to allow too indiscriminate loaning of works of art, and the contrary advice of the experts will be overruled.
I should like provision to be written into the Bill that no work of art should be removed from the premises when the director of the department concerned, the keeper or whatever his proper title may be, advises that it would be contrary to the safety of the work of art in question.
I should like to refer briefly also to Clause 5 concerning the disposal of objects. Paradoxically, perhaps, in view of what I have said, I should like to see somewhat wider powers of disposal. My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) made a persuasive case for giving a power of exchange. He instanced the case of our Greek treasures, in which we are extremely rich —some might almost think over-rich—in one period and very poor in the earliest works which some consider to be the finest works of Greek art. If it would be possible to effect an exchange which would be of mutual benefit to us and to the Athens Museum, and which, incidentally, would give great pleasure to the people of Greece, that is something which we should earnestly consider.
I am inclined to agree with the view expressed by the Minister in introducing the Bill that that is something which should not be done except with the approval of Parliament. I should, however, like provision to be written into the Bill whereby on the recommendation of the trustees there might be power, subject to, say, affirmative Resolutions of both Houses, to dispose either by way of gift or by way of exchange when there is a strong case for doing so and where this is thought to be in the interests of this country as well as of the other country concerned in the transaction.

7.42 p.m.

Mr. Eric Fletcher: I should like, first, to comment on two points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot). He made some important observations on Clause 4 and I entirely agree with what he said about it. It might, however, assist the House to be reminded that, as it stands, Clause 4 is more favourable to my hon. Friend's point of view than is the existing Act of 1924 which is being repealed.
Under the existing law, the trustees merely have to be satisfied that provision is made for the safety and insurance of specimens, whereas by Clause 4 of the Bill they must have regard to the interests of students and others. So far, so good. I do not, however, dissent from my hon. Friend's proposition that further safeguards might be introduced into the Bill.
My hon. Friend and others have spoken about Clause 5. I am glad that there is no provision in the Bill which would enable the trustees of the British Museum to part with the Elgin Marbles. Lord Elgin rendered a service both to this country and to those antiquities in bringing that valuable collection to this country, where they have been well preserved ever since, where they are in a much better state of preservation than they would otherwise have been had they been left there, and where their esthetic beauties have been admired by so many people.
The wide interest which has been shown on both sides of the House, not only in the Bill, but in the functions of the British Museum generally, should be a stimulus to the Government, and a refreshing indication of the general public interest that is taken in it. I was not merely disappointed, but I was appalled, by the complacency with which the Chief Secretary to the Treasury approached the subject. I hope that the Economic Secretary, who has been present throughout the debate, will have been duly impressed by the representations that have been made to him by nearly every hon. Member who has spoken that if the British Museum is to function as we hope it should, and if it is to be worthy of its position in the cultural life of the nation, a great deal more must be done by the Treasury.
I do not agree with all the criticisms of the British Museum that have been written in recent months. I do not, for example, go as far as Mrs. Jacquetta Hawkes in her article in the Observer a few months ago, when she said that the Museum was a national disgrace and that it was a shambles. Dr. Glyn Daniel has written in rather similar strain.
Without resorting to exaggeration, I am sure that the Treasury representatives who have listened to this debate must by now appreciate that—to put it mildly—all is not well with the British Museum. The truth is that it has not kept pace with the times. It does not compare favourably with other national museums. I think not only of those in the United States, but of those in places like Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, Cairo, Copenhagen and almost any other place one


cares to name. The trouble with the British Museum is that it has not kept abreast of the times.
In saying that, I should like to make it clear, as a number of my hon. Friends have done, that no reflection is cast upon the present Director, who since his appointment has shown a great deal of initiative, enterprise and enthusiasm in getting things done. There has, how-even, been a generation of neglect, the blame for which must be laid at the hands either of the trustees or of the Treasury. It may be that, as the Chief Secretary said, we have been inhibited in some respects in criticising the trustees too much because Mr. Speaker himself is one of he principal trustees. The fault however, is not mainly the neglect of the trustees, it is mainly the parsimony of the Treasury. By suggesting such a fundamental change in the constitution of the trustees, the Bill admits by implication that something is wrong with the present constitution. Otherwise, there would be no need to change it.
There is no doubt that the British Museum has suffered from the fact that it has had a large number of ex officio trustees, all of whom are busy and important people with responsibilities in other walks of life and none of whom has been able to act as an effective, efficient spokesman for the British Museum.
We are remedying the constitution. We are devising a new set-up of trustees. I do not today propose to talk about the details of the constitution, because those are matters which can be examined in Committee. There are many Amendments which should be examined in Committee. On Second Reading, it is more appropriate to comment, as the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) did in what I regarded as a constructive and helpful speech, upon the general position and functions of the Museum in our national life.
Although the trustees are being reconstituted and, as the Chief Secretary told me in answer to an intervention, they will now, for the first time, be able to appoint their own chairman, what is wanted above all else is that they should appoint as chairman someone who is a capable, energetic spokesman and who can continually prod the Treasury into effective action.
It may be that the only excuse by the Treasury for what I regard as its parsimonious attitude towards the British Museum during the last generation is that it has not been prodded often enough or vigorously or effectively enough by the trustees. Let us hope that with a new body and a new chairman there will be somebody who will be able to express what, I am convinced, is the national desire that the British Museum should be restored to the prestige that it used to have in our national life and which, with adequate Treasury assistance, it can have again.
It is obvious that the British Museum has suffered from financial neglect as compared with other institutions like the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and so on. I am not sure whether it is generally recognised, although it has been mentioned in this debate, that even now, seventeen years after the end of the war, the war damage repairs at the British Museum have not yet been done.
There are two large and spacious galleries that were destroyed by bombs twenty years ago, and still remain derelict. As a result, the public have been denied the use of and access to what used to be the prehistoric gallery, with its valuable collection, and the Greek and Roman vase room. When one remembers the amount of money that has been spent all over the country in various directions on war damage repairs, it is really a scandal that these repairs at the British Museum have not yet been done.
The failure is the more serious when one recalls that in the best of conditions the Museum is suffering from a grotesque lack of space. In this connection, I want to mention one related matter which I hope the Government will consider. We all understand that the plan of the Treasury and the Ministry of Public Building and Works is for the removal of the library, thereby providing additional space at the Museum itself on the present site. That plan will take some years to fructify and materialise, and I hope that we will not be told that it will delay any longer the putting in hand of the war damage repairs that should be done to these two galleries.
I have heard a rumour which I hope is not true and which I hope will be


contradicted, that the Government are proposing to allot a sum of money—£400,000 has been mentioned—to the Standing Committee on Museums and Galleries to be allocated between the British Museum and various provincial museums. If that is so, it will not do. It is totally unsatisfactory. It will not do for the Government to hive off their responsibility in this by allocating a global sum to a body which has no responsibility to Parliament, thus putting the British Museum in the impossible and humiliating position of having to go cap in hand for a fair share.
The British Museum is a national responsibility and it is a function of the Government to see that it is not starved of financial resources that are overdue to equip it to catch up with the position it was in at the end of the war. Of course, that is not the end of the matter. The other great crying shortage is that of staff. What I said of the directors is true of the keepers and the rest of the dedicated staff.
I do not know whether the public realise to the full all the duties expected of a much over-worked staff. They not only have their duties towards the general public, but their duties to scholars. They also have to record antiquities and preserve them, catalogue them and publish them. They have to deal with multifarious inquiries from the general public and provide facilities for students both from Britain and overseas who wish to study specialised subjects. There is a glaring shortage of space and a great shortage of staff.
These are matters which cannot be dealt with in the Bill and which cannot, as far as I can see, be dealt with by amendments in Committee. Nevertheless, these are overriding problems which the Treasury must face. Incidentally. in connection with staff, I endorse what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said about Clause 6. It is an astonishing omission that the Government have not taken the opportunity as The Times also pointed out in its leading article today, of clearing up once and for all the uncertainty and the legal, technical doubt as to whether the senior staff at the Museum are or are not civil servants. I hope that we can deal with that in Com-

mittee. There are various other things which we can also deal with then.
Also in connection with Clause 6, I hope that we shall make it clear, if it is not already clear, that the trustees have power to create new departments, to subdivide existing departments, and, if necessary, to amalgamate some of the existing departments.
Now I turn to Clauses 8 and 9. I regard Clause 9 as dangerous. I appreciate the reasons for it, that without it the trustees would not have the legal power to move the present library across the road, and that it may well be necessary for a limited time that there should be authorised depositories and power temporarily to transfer books to other institutions. But I want an assurance that these powers will not in any circumstances be used to "out-house" —if I may use the phrase—any of the Museum's books at any distance from the centre of London. It is essential that any member of the reading public should at all times be able to get any book he wants within a few minutes.
Since I want to make some adverse comments on part of the Museum, before doing so I want to express my own appreciation, and that of various friends who use it, of the admirable facilities rendered by the library. It has a deservedly high and I suppose unique reputation. One of my correspondents writes:
The service offered by the Library has vastly improved in the last eighteen months and is now excellent …The atmosphere of concentration, the arrangement of the catalogues, the range of the open shelves, the arrangement, height, etc. of the desks could not be improved. They all tend to produce an atmosphere conducive to good work, and produce a spirit of courteous co-operation and service in the Library staff, which is unmatched, and irreplaceable.
The same enthusiast about the library has a good deal to say on the Museum. It concerns something which the House must face as well as the Treasury. Although it has been touched Upon by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet it has not been expressed in the debate tonight in the detail in which it should have been ventilated.
Reference has been made to the African collection and the ethnological collection, but the real trouble with the


Museum is that although it has an admirable African collection, admirable collections of classical and Egyptian antiquities—the mummies are always popular attractions—there has been a scandalous neglect of British archæmology.
During the last twenty-five or thirty years there has been a growing interest in British archæology of all kinds. One reads in the columns of the Press about excavations and discoveries. Students from practically every university now spend a certain amount of time in the summer months, and sometimes at Easter, in various archæological activities. Unfortunately, the department which is supposed to deal with British antiquities and British archæology in the Museum is the most miserably staffed of all—and has lamentably inadequate space.
I know that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury takes a great interest in this matter. There is an immense and growing demand for space and exhibits dealing with British arahæology.
A few years ago the British and Modiæval Department had one assistant keeper responsible for the whole of the Palæolithic Collection, the whole of the Megalithic Collection, the whole of the European Collection of British Prehistoric Archæology, and the whole of Roman Britain, whereas, by way of comparison, the comparable departments in the National Museum at Stockholm enjoyed a staff of 13.
This, then, is the current criticism of the British Museum. It has ceased to march with the times. There has been an enormous financial stringency which has prevented it fulfilling its function in relation to British archæology. Perhaps I might quote Professor Hawker, who is also the President of the Council of British Archæology. Writing in the current number of Antiquity he says—and I endorse and commend this to the right hon. Gentleman—
Where they"—
that is, the trustees—
have been scandalously wrong, and will continue so unless a great change comes, is in what seems their disdain for this country's archæology as such … It need not always he disdain, so much as sheer unawareness … it' is a cry of deep dissatisfaction, by decent,

civilized and honest people, after seventeen years of stupid official meanness …
This is a very serious reflection on the Treasury. It is no reflection on the staff of the museum.
Something has been said about methods of display. I do not know whether the Chief Secretary has been to the British Museum recently. No doubt he has, and has seen, for example, the recent exhibits in the King Edward VII Gallery of the Tara Brooch and the Ardagh Challice exhibited with the most modern technical methods of display…an admirable production.
There is nothing wrong with the skill, ability, and enthusiasm of the staff. Our criticism is that the Treasury ought to be galvanised out of its parsimonious attitude and ought, as a result of this debate, to provide the means necessary to make the British Museum again worthy of its name and of its past.

8.2 p.m.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Edward du Cann): I am sure that my right hon. Friend would wish me first to express our appreciation for the general welcome which the Bill has received. Indeed, during the course of this debate we have had some most helpful and valuable contributions. Perhaps I could say one or two words in endorsement of what my right hon. Friend said when he opened the debate, and then attempt to reply to the many detailed questions which have been raised.
There are two main reasons why the Government have introduced this Bill. First, the legislation governing the British Museum is very much out of date in many respects, a point which has been amply illustrated during the course of the debate, and which has justly been the subject of criticism in the Press, not only today but on other occasions. There are many British Museum Acts going back to 1753, and containing a good many archaisms, inconsistencies, and far too much rigidity. Again, I think that these points have been clearly underlined during the debate. The Bill therefore is a streamlining Measure designed to bring the organisation of the museum up to date, and also to provide sonic flexibility in place of the tight statutory restrictions by which the British Museum is bound


more closely than any of the comparable national institutions.
I turn to the second reason, which is that there are in the offing two major building projects affecting the Museum —the new Library in Bloomsbury, and the National Science Reference Library on the South Bank. As my right hon. Friend made clear, under existing legislation the British Museum has no power to move any of its books into these new buildings when they are completed. Therefore, before we go any further with the preparatory work of these two most expensive projects, we ought to remove the statutory obstacle to the use of the new buildings.
Those, then, are the two main reasons for the introduction of this new Measure, and it is very gratifying that it has been so warmly welcomed.
I should like particularly to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. R. Thompson) who is one of the family trustees of the Museum, and I should like to associate myself, as I am sure the House would like to be associated, with what my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington (Sir H. Oakshott) said about him and his speech.
May I also express our appreciation for the welcome given to the Bill by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). Were he in his place at the moment—and I appreciate that he cannot be, just as other hon. Members cannot—I would quarrel with him very violently, for he made the extraordinary statement that his presence at a meeting of the Board of Trustees lowered their standards somewhat. I am sure that that is completely untrue, and I know that the House would agree with me in that regard. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
A number of harsh things have been said about the Treasury, especially by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), and to a lesser extent by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher). I have had the figures prepared of Government aid to the arts. Government aid to the national arts museums and galleries has risen from about £650,000 per annum in 1945–46 to over £4·3 million in 1961–62. Total arts expenditure over the same years has risen from £1 million to just

under £9 million. As regards the British Museum's net expenditure—this is apart from any appropriation from the Ministry of Public Building and Works expenditure on building—the amount spent has risen from about £350,000 in 1952–53, to about £908,000 in 1962–63; that is to say, over the last 10 years. Nobody visiting the British Museum or learning about its activities would deny that much more requires to be done, but it would be quite wrong for the impression to be given that nothing has been, and nothing is being done.
On the subject of staff to which reference has been made by more than one hon. Member, it may well be that further staff is required, but it is proper that we should take credit for the fact that staff has been improved numerically by about 60 per cent. since 1952.
The hon. Member for Islington, East asked whether war damage work would now be put off at this moment. I had occasion to visit the Museum last week, and I was pleased to note that progress is being made, and will continue to be made, in restoring war damage. I agree that it is positively scandalous that 20 years after the war we should be waiting for that to be done, but progress is being made.
The hon. and learned Member for Kettering asked about attendances. We should all like to see more and better use made of the facilities of the Museum, which are so outstanding. The figures for 1961 show an attendance of 944,000. I am pleased to tell the hon. and learned Gentleman that we hope that the figure for this year will be over the 1 million mark, and I agree with him when he suggests that we should like to see the figures go higher still.
A great deal was said by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) on the subject of the public relations of the Museum; about the need for better display; about the need for better facilities for visitors, and so on. In this context I should like to pay the warmest possible tribute, with which I am sure the House would like to be associated, to the devoted work done by keepers and staff in general. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I do not, and I know that neither does the hon. and learned Member for Kettering, share the view of the New Statesman


about the staff and the keepers, or, alternatively, about the uniformed staff there. I think that they do an extremely good and valuable job.

Mr. Mitchison: I quite agree with him. I did not quote it. I quoted something quite different about the display in the Museum.

Mr. du Cann: I realise that, but I wanted to get on record my total disagreement—not for the first time—with the New Statesman.
The House pays tribute to those responsible for this most important work. It pays it to them for the advances they have made, for the conscientiousness they have shown, and for the keenness they have displayed. At the same time, I know very well from the short time that I have had the opportunity to make contact with members of the staff that they are very conscious of such shortcomings as exist. Part of the problem has been the bombing, but security is another problem to which they are quite right to give high priority. Much has been said about a new start and the need for further progress, and I cannot help thinking that that is precisely the opportunity that the Bill will give these devoted people. I am most grateful for the apparent agreement of the House with that suggestion.

Mr. Mitchison: Wait a minute! What we are anxious about is whether the staff will get the money to do it.

Mr. du Cann: The hon. and learned Member interrupted me just as I came to that page in my notes which refers to this paint. It is perhaps relevant to bear in mind that the capital cost of the new buildings we are contemplating is about £10 million and £1 million respectively —very handsome sums.

Mr. Mitchison: Spread over a number of years.

Mr. du Cann: It may be that they will be spread over five or six years, but if somebody was to give me, or any body in which I was interested, that amount of money I would not mind whether it was given at once or over a period.
I now turn to the additional point made by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering and the right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale)—who has explained to me his inability to be

here at the moment. There was some discussion on the subject of the appointment of the trustees by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Such an arrangement is so normal in relation to major bodies of this sort that it might be felt derogatory to the Museum to place the appointments in other and less distinguished hands. I am sure that it is right to make that observation, and that it is correct to say that these appointments, when made, will be of the very highest status; men with the greatest sense of responsibility.
In the case of the Natural History Museum, as my right hon. Friend has said—I make the point again because questions were asked about it—appointments of trustees will be made in consultation with the Minister for Science. The aim will be to secure a well-balanced board, qualified to deal with all the various aspects of the Museum's activities. It is appreciated that they are very wide-ranging appointments, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross).
Questions were also asked about the representation of the universities. Suggestions were made that various bodies or persons should be represented, or should have the right to choose the trustees. This exactly illustrates the difficulty that we are in. Learned societies are already represented, but universities are not, and if we were to extend the principle it would be very difficult to draw the line. The board of trustees will no doubt include persons representative of various institutions and professions which have a contribution to make, but it would be right to point out that this can very well be achieved without tied appointments.
Questions were asked by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering and the right hon. Member for South Shields about the status of the staff. It may be that hon. Members had in mind the fact that a paragraph in the leading article of The Times this morning referred to the matter. This is to some extent an academic point. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) also referred to it. There is no statutory definition of what constitutes a civil servant, but the important thing for practical purposes is that the staff of the British Museum have the pay and conditions of service of civil servants.


So far as we are aware there is no evidence that the application of Civil Service rules is an impediment to the proper functioning of these institutions. The difference between these splendid people and ordinary civil servants is that they are responsible to trustees.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon was particularly interested in the fact that a number of people working in the Natural History Museum had taken up appointments overseas. We must view very seriously the emigration of specialists from the United Kingdom. On the other hand, I am told that it is a very long and proud tradition of the Museum that scientific staff leave to take up senior posts in other institutes throughout the world, and I am sure that it is right that that should be so, and that we should always encourage flexibility of movement as between one academic museum or institution and another. In that way we may make progress; in that way we keep fresh; in that way ideas may get busily explored in different places. To endeavour to stop that movement, or to stultify it, would not be in the interests of the people themselves or of museums throughout the world.

Sir C. Black: Is my hon. Friend aware that although what he is saying might be true if the removals were merely for the reason that he has suggested, if—as I have good reason to know—people have left merely because of dissatisfaction with present conditions, that is a matter which should give concern?

Mr. du Cann: Dissatisfaction with conditions is one thing, but the desire of a man to make a change at some time in his life and go from one job to another is a thoroughly good and laudable thing. It is not easy to avoid the temptation of confusing one with the other. Nevertheless, the point made by my hon. Friend will be watched and considered. I merely suggest that it should not be taken too seriously.
My hon. Friend mentioned in particular the case of Dr. Tucker. I can assure the House that all the Ministers who have studied the papers, including three successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, have accepted that the trustees' action in dismissing Dr. Tucker was entirely

proper, and was taken only after thorough and anxious deliberation. I have taken the precaution in recent months of studying the papers myself, being aware of this debate and of the possibility that the matter would be mentioned. After having looked at them I am convinced that what the right hon. Member for South Shields said in this context was absolutely correct. I am grateful to him for having said it.
I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon, my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington, the hon. Member for Swindon and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central about the Elgin Marbles. This is an extraordinarily difficult subject. The reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington and the hon. Member for Swindon, who both spoke very eloquently on the subject, was given by the contributions made by other hon. Members, to the effect that the suggestion that these Marbles should be moved is by no means a popular one, either in the House or in the country. I believe that it was Francis Bacon who said
Antiquities are … some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
That is not true of the Elgin Marbles, because it was the deliberate act of Lord Elgin which saved them for posterity. Otherwise they would not exist now.

Dr. Horace King: Can the hon. Member tell us how Lord Elgin could be said to have served posterity when he took one of the six Caryatids from the Erectheum when the five remaining ones are in a fine state of preservation and weep for their sister, as his hon. Friend said.

Mr. du Cann: What my hon. Friend said was that it was the Caryatid in the British Museum that was crying, and not the others. What I have said is broadly true, and I am glad to see that the House is acknowledging it. Incidentally, if that caryatid cries at all, I think perhaps it cries for the soul of a guide to the Acropolis whom I met in Greece a few months ago, and who told my wife and me—believing that we were Americans—a long story about the wickedness of Lord Elgin in having taken these Marbles away. Whereas, as I say, I


think that the proper thing to do is to pay tribute to his memory, both as a lover of Greece and all which Greece stands for and as a patriotic citizen.
Turning to specific points raised by the hon. Member for Swindon, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is always glad to see any hon. Member who may wish to discuss any matter with him, whatever it may be—[Laughter.] That is one of the ordinary courtesies between the Minister and back bench Members of this House and it is well known.
There was a great deal of discussion about the separation between the museums. Some hon. Members argued for it and some against it. As the subject has been substantially discussed I think it right to make the point regarding liaison—in specific reply to the right hon. Member for South Shields—that so far as I am aware there would be no objection to the appointment of common trustees, no doubt to a limited extent.
My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet referred to the question of an Oriental Museum. The shortest and best comment which I can make on that is that the trustees under the Bill can create a separate part of the British Museum to display oriental art, or primitive art, or any other speciality. What they cannot do is create a completely new museum legally independent of the British Museum. I feel strongly that after the passage of the Bill, if the House should see fit to pass it, we shall have an opportunity for better display, better housing and better storage. I hope that answers to some extent the point made by my hon. Friend with his special knowledge of the subject, and by the hon. Member for Islington, East.
The hon. and learned Member for Kettering and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central asked about the hours in connection with the reading room. This point was also referred to by the hon. Member for Islington, East, who, I know, uses the library a great deal. We shall pay attention to what was said in that regard and consider it. I am sure that those who work in the library will be grateful for the graceful tribute from the hon. Member for Islington, East.
A good deal has been said about loans and out-houses and the Louvre was referred to by the hon. Member for

Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) who is unable to be present now. I hope that he was not blaming the Government for everything that the French do. It is hard enough to put the blame on the Government for all sorts of things that we do not do. At the same time, we recognise that this is a complicated matter, upon which strong differences of opinion may be held. The tendency is for loans from one museum to another to occur much more, and this is a thoroughly healthy and desirable practice. We shall have to watch carefully before stopping the tendency in relation to our own institutions. It would be a retrogressive thing to be too restrictive. But, on the other hand, there is need for very great care in all these matters.

Mr. Mitchison: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the question of loans, will he consider the question of the wording and the difference between this Bill and the provisions in the 1924 Act? It seems to me that the 1924 Act is tighter regarding safety and that possibly the Bill is a little slack.

Mr. du Cann: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. We shall certainly look at that. I do not think that the Bill was designed to be less tight in that respect. But it was designed to be more generous in accordance with modern practice. This, like a number of others, is one of the matters which we look forward to debating during the Committee stage proceedings.
The right hon. Member for South Shields referred to repositories and the need for their accessibility. I am sure that that is right. The hon. Member for Islington, East, spoke about books in this regard and I aim sure that that also is right. On the other hand, it would be a mistake at this stage to lay dawn the law too closely, as it were. This situation will develop over the next decade or twenty-five years, and it would be a pity to restrict the museum authorities too greatly. And again, we can look at Clause 5 (1, c), which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central referred to the power to dispose of forgeries. This is a permissive and not a compulsive power. I agree with the hon. Member for Islington, East that


some forgeries are extraordinarily interesting. As he said, some are more interesting than the real thing. The Bill as drafted contains no instruction to get rid of forgeries automatically and I repeat that the power is permissive. I heard the other day of an exhibition of stamp forgeries where one person exhibited a real genuine stamp, Which annoyed everybody very much and he was black-balled from the club for ever after. That seems a little hard.
A number of other points were raised during the debate, which has gone on a little longer than was originally anticipated. I do not think that a mistake, because it is a poor thing, if we cannot, despite all our problems and difficulties, pay attention to things of this sort. They matter a very great deal and will continue to do so for many years to came.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: I am sorry if I was heard to mutter too loudly about that. But we are operating a timetable and this Bill has already had its share.

Mr. du Cann: Well, there we are. Opinions differ on the matter. But I make no apology to the House for the length of any of the speeches made either from the Front Benches or from the back benches. I think it matters very much about what happens to the British Museum in future.
Other points were made during the discussion and I am sorry that I have not time to deal with them. We shall look forward to discussing them during the Committee stage. The Bill was prepared in close consultation with the British Museum and we were assured by the existing trustees that they regard it as a good Bill. Naturally, there must be some regrets at breaking picturesque and important links with the past. But we believe, from the support indicated in the House, that an attempt has been made to bring up to date the management of perhaps the greatest of our cultural institutions which should provide it with the power to enable it to fulfil its rôle properly in modern conditions. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Ordered,
That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee of Eight Members, Four to be nominated by the House and Four by the Committee of Selection.—[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]

8.31 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison: With respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I rose when you started reading the Question.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): I think that I can explain to the hon. and learned Member. The first sentence in this Motion is non-debatable and has to be put. I understand that he wishes to speak on the next part, which I shall put separately.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That there shall stand referred to the Select Committee—

(a) any Petition against the Bill presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office at any time not later than 10th January, 1963, and
(b) any Petition which has been presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office and in which the Petitioners complain of any amendment as proposed in the filled-up Bill or of any matter which has arisen during the progress of the Bill before the said Committee,
being a Petition in which the Petitioners pray to be heard by themselves, their Counsel or Agents:
That if no such Petition as is mentioned in sub-paragraph (a) above is presented, or if all such Petitions are withdrawn before the meeting of the Committee, the Order for the committal of the Bill to a Select Committee shall be discharged and the Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee:
That any Petitioner whose Petition stands referred to the Select Committee shall, subject to the Rules and Orders of the House and to the Prayer of his Petition, be entitled to be heard by himself, his Counsel or Agents upon his Petition provided that it is prepared and signed in conformity with the Rules and Orders of the House, and the Member in charge of the Bill shall be entitled to be heard by his Counsel or Agents in favour of the Bill against that Petition.—[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]

Mr. Mitchison: I do not propose to take up the time of the House for more than a moment or two. It seems perfectly clear, however, after the debate on the Bill, that discussion of the Bill by a Select Committee of eight Members will restrict the amount of comment that quite properly should be made. If this were not a hybrid Bill, it would clearly have gone to a considerably larger Committee. I do not know that anything can


be done about it at the moment, and I appreciate the position, that there is the possibility of no petition and consequently a reference to the Standing Committee, but, at present, whether there is a petition or not, depends on whether the Bill stays with the Select Committee of eight Members or goes to the Standing Committee.
I do not think that we can do anything about it today, but I wish the Government would consider whether this is the right way of dealing with the matter. It will not arise if there is no petition. Then there will be no trouble; it will go to a Standing Committee and all will be well. But the existence of a single petition which is not withdrawn may result in the Bill being dealt with by a very small Select Committee instead of, what I think much better, by a Committee up to the maximum of 15 Members, or something of that number which we are allowed to have on a Select Committee. I make the plea to the Government believing that they think the Bill wants proper consideration in Committee. I realise that it may mean withdrawal of this Motion and substitution of another, but there ought to be no difficulty about that. Perhaps the Government will consider that matter on its merits.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: On the first point, we have no option in the matter but to move this Motion in the light of the view of the authorities of the House, as to which I express no opinion, that this should be treated as a hybrid Bill. That being so, the necessary notices have been circulated and served and are returnable, I understand, by 10th January.
As I understand the procedure, there would be no real difficulty except an additional stage resulting from this. Either petitions will be submitted or they will not. If no petitions are submitted, as the hon. and learned Member said, the Bill, under the Standing Orders, will go to a Standing Committee. Equally, if petitions are submitted there has to be a hearing—I think that is the correct word—before the Select Committee. It is not for me to lay down the Standing Orders, but the advice I have is that after the stage of the hearing by the Select Committee the Bill will go to a Standing Committee. In any event, this

is a matter on which I have no option in view of the view taken and I can express no opinion about the view of the authorities of the House.

Mr. Mitchison: If I may have the permission of the House to speak again, I should say that the right hon. Gentleman has not taken the point. This is a Select Committee which is a small Committee. I mentioned 15 as the maximum under the rules. The Bill could just as well be referred to a Select Committee of 15 as to one of eight.
As to the second possibility, I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman is right. If he will look at the bottom of page 566 of Erskine May, which deals with proceedings in Committee on a hybrid Bill and is referring all the time to a Select Committee, he will see that it says:
When the case for the petitioners has been concluded and the promoters heard in reply, the committee"—
that is, the Select Committee—
go through the clauses of the bill and report it with or without amendments.
That is to say, if there is a petition there is not a transference after the hearing of the petition from one Committee to another, which would be a remarkably complicated arrangement, but, in fact, the same Select Committee goes on to consider the Bill. I may be right or wrong. This is not the time to go into the matter. All I ask the Government to do is to consider it with a view to having a sufficient number of hon. Members present for the Committee stage.
The Motion says that the Committee shall consist of eight members, with five as the quorum. I understand that a Select Committee on a hybrid Bill does not have the same strict obligation of attendance and that there might not be even eight members there. That would be cutting it rather fine for a Bill of this kind.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If I may speak again by leave of the House, if that is necessary, I will not argue with the hon. and learned Gentleman as to the effect of the Standing Orders, because they do not lie in his hands or mine. The advice that I have had is as I have stated it. It may, as the hon. and learned Gentleman fairly said, equally


be wrong. The practical point on the Motion is that we are bound, in view of the line the House authorities have taken, to seek this procedure and go to a Select Committee.
As to the numbers, the purpose of the Select Committee being to hear petitions, there is really no point at all in expanding the numbers. Indeed, I understand that the number proposed—eight—is rather larger than has normally been the practice. I have been into the precedents, and, as I understand it, in the case of the last four such Bills eight has been the number, but that itself was an increase from the former number, which was six. When one is dealing with not so much a committee concerned with detail but a quasi-judicial body to hear petitions, quite different considerations apply as to the numbers. In any event, in so far as we are resting on the recent practice of the House, we are going on the high figure rather than the low.

Mr. Fletcher: To deal with the practical question, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, if a petition is presented before 10th January, he will, as a practical measure, whatever the Standing Orders may provide, take the appropriate steps after the Recess to ensure that the Select Committee will deal with the petition alone and that the Bill shall then go to a Standing Committee in the ordinary way? I am sure that can be done if it is the wish of the House, and it seems to be the wish of both sides.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If I may again speak by leave of the House, I certainly cannot give an undertaking to do anything which would override a Standing Order. If the effect of the Standing Order be as the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) thinks it is, it certainly will show that this should go to a Committee in the ordinary way. However, as I have said, I cannot undertake to do anything to override a Standing Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,
That the Committee have power to report from day to day the Minutes of the Evidence taken before them:
That Five be the Quorum of the Committee. —[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]

BRITISH MUSEUM [MONEY]

[Queen's Recommendation signified]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).

[Sir ROBERT GRIMSTON in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to alter the composition of the Trustees of the British Museum, to provide for the separation from the British Museum of the British Museum (Natural History), to make new provision with respect to the regulation of the two Museums and their collections in place of that made by the British Museum Act, 1753 and enactments amending or supplementing that Act, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid, it is expedient to authorize—

(a) any increase in expenditure out of moneys provided by Parliament which is attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session enabling objects comprised in the collections of the British Museum or the British Museum (Natural History) to be kept in premises additional to those in which they were required to be kept immediately before the commencement of the Act;
(b) the payment into the Exchequer of the net proceeds of any sale or other disposition of the property regulated by the British Museum (Purchase of Land) Act, 1894.—[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

ARMED FORCES (PENSIONS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]

8.39 p.m.

Brigadier Sir John Smyth: I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the very important subject of pensions for the Armed Forces, which is the subject proposed for this Adjournment debate. As we are left with rather a shorter time than we expected and as so many of my hon. Friends are interested in the subject and want to speak, I shall try to curtail considerably the remarks I intended to make.
As a Service pensioner myself, I must declare an interest. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War will wind up the debate in place of the Minister of Pensions, which


will be very agreeable to us. We are particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for being present on the Front Bench to listen to the debate. I know that he has had a very long day, but he has been so intimately concerned with this subject in various capacities that we value his presence here very much. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury when we put through our first big increase in disability pensions in the Budget of 1952, and he has been Minister of Pensions over a number of years. He is generally regarded, I know, by the ex-Service associations, and certainly by myself, as probably the greatest Minister of Pensions this country has ever had. I say that with considerable weight of authority of outside opinion.
We are very fortunate indeed to have him in his present position, because although the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Pensions are very important people for the Service pensioner, they are not as important as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is the Chancellor of the Exchequer who decides what increase, if any, can be made. Almost more important, he is responsible for trying to keep the cost of living as steady as possible, which is a big factor in the life of the pensioner.
Today, pensioners of a certain class had a big Christmas present when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health in a Written Answer to a Question which I had put down to him announced that the new type patella tendon-bearing limb is ready for issue at the beginning of next year. This is very welcome to certain hon. Members particularly the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King), who has been very interested in the matter of the limbless for many years, to my certain knowledge, and to B.L.E.S.M.A., who are absolutely delighted at this announcement. It will mean that 25,000 below-the-knee amputees who up to the present have had to wear that very uncomfortable strap and harness and belts, with things over their shoulders, will have a very much easier and more comfortable limb and will be able to walk more naturally by using the unrestricted muscles of their thighs instead of walking simply by mechanical means. This new limb was first invented by the United States and it has been perfected by the Roehampton Research

Department. I think that one might call it the independent deterrent against premature old age, particularly as it started in one country and has been adapted and perfected in another.
This Government's record on pensions of every sort has been extremely good by comparison with that of any other Government which we have ever had in this country. The disability pension has been more than doubled since 1951 and, even more important from my point of view, we have increased materially the special allowances to certain classes of people about whom, even at the end of my time in the Ministry of Pensions I was rather worried. Those were the elderly, badly disabled man who was unable to work and the elderly war widow. Their allowances have been greatly increased and I am certainly much happier about them today than I have been previously.
With regard to the ordinary Service pensions in the light of the increases announced recently, this is the sixth pension increase since the end of the war. The first was in 1947. Then there were increases in 1952, 1954, 1956, 1959, and lastly the one which has just been announced. The last one is by far the largest. It is twice as large as any other at a cost of £22 million a year, including the £4·4 million for the Service pension element. The Service element of this increase covers 112,500 pensioners of the Armed Forces. Everyone will agree, although they might not agree with the actual amount of the grant, that there is an important provision in the new increases in the flat rate of £20 which is given to people over 70. This is what one might call a booster, which is what is wanted for the elderly, to whom a sedative is of very little use.
The expression "booster" comes from Australia. An Australian V.C. friend of mine who came home the other day for the July reunion told me when he arrived here that he would never have got here without a booster. He is just on the point of 70, as are the majority of the 259 V.C.s still living. He was really like the man who went to his doctor and said, Doctor, it is no good you telling me that I am burning the candle at both ends. I have come to you for some more wax". This is what my friend said to his doctor. The doctor gave him some


more wax in the shape of an injection, which was marvellous, because when my friend walked into my flat I do not think the effect of the booster had worn off.
I do not think that the Civil Service pensioner can be compared with the Service pensioner. I have always been of that opinion. I hold that opinion more firmly today than I have ever done. I have a great regard for civil servants, with whom I have worked very happily in two Ministries. The civil servant has settled employment up to the age of 60. He is able to live a more or less regular married life. He can buy a house at the beginning of his marriage with a good prospect of being able to live in it for a good many years, or being able to let it, or at any rate being able to live in it at the end of his service. The schooling of his children is comparatively easy.
The Service man lives a very unsettled life indeed compared with the civil servant. He is subject to premature retirement. He is probably constantly on foreign service. He has separations. He has extreme difficulties in educating his children. There is very little comparison between the two. In addition, in wartime he has the danger, the separation from his family, the necessity to keep up two establishments, and all the anxiety of being away from his family.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman will not overlook the fact that in wartime the civil servant goes to war as well.

Sir J. Smyth: I will not argue that point with the hon. Gentleman. Most people would agree that the difference is very great indeed. With a class of person like the Far Eastern prisoners of war, who spent three years in a prison camp and then had to come back and try to readjust their lives, it is fantastic to try to—

Colonel Sir Harwood Harrison: As one of such people, I should like to say how grateful I am to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) and others who worked so hard for those former prisoners of war.

Sir J. Smyth: I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for those remarks. It

was this House which, on an all-party Motion moved by me about 11 years ago, allowed me to put through a Measure which obtained for the Far Eastern prisoners of war about £5 million, and that has been of great comfort to them.

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey: Concerning the Civil Service. a great number serving out in the Far East in Hong Kong, Malaya and elsewhere went into the bag, and that should not be forgotten.

Sir J. Smyth: I think that, by and large, there is a big difference. I do not think that it would apply if we had another global war. In such a case all the medals and disability pensions would probably go to hon. Members of this House and there would be great competition to get into some little trench in the jungle or the desert. However, we are today considering the past and not what may be in the future.
The war disability pension has a slight advantage over the industrial injuries pension, and that is not generally known. There is not a great difference but there are a number of little differences in the allowances. It must be remembered that the war disability pension is paid probably as a result of injuries sustained on the battlefield overseas. However, there should be introduced some sort of extra amenity for the Service pensioner compared with the person who served only at home. In this connection, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley) said in an excellent speech on 26th November that he thought that too much notice was being taken of medical evidence when assessing the cases of ex-Service men. I think my hon. Friend was saying that the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance doctors did not give enough weight to the nature of the shock or mental and physical strain which men undergo long before they apply for pensions.
I gave an example of this when I spoke in the House on 7th July, 1958. I spoke of the sinking of our two armoured cruisers, the "Dorsetshire" and the "Cornwall", by Japanese bombers in the Indian Ocean. I pointed out that both ships broke up and sank within eight minutes and that the survivors had to spend 36 hours in the water fending off the sharks before being rescued. Few of


them put in for pensions at that time and, when they did—because not many of them had past medical records—few of them obtained pensions.
I want to draw attention to three anomalies in the Service pension as it exists today, taking into account the recently announced increases. The worst-off pensioner is the older officer. I am concentrating on officers tonight because I know that other hon. Members, particularly the hon. and galant Gentleman the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey), will I am sure speak on behalf of the other ranks. The hon. and gallant Gentleman will, no doubt, fill in any gaps I leave. It is a sad fact that the men who come off worst under our pensions scheme are the older officers who retired years ago and who probably fought in both world wars.
The maximum addition they get out of the recently announced increases is 12 per cent., and that is the same as has been awarded to those who retired only 6½ years ago. The latter group get the same proportionate increase as the pensioner who retired under the 1919 code, which goes back 43 years and those who retired under the 1945 code, which goes back 17 years. The pension of a captain under the age of 60, including the recent increase, will be £299 a year. In contrast, a captain retiring under the 1962 code will get £725 a year, a difference of £426.
I think the House will agree that that is much too great a discrepancy between the older retired officer and the new. I put it to the Minister for his consideration that those under the 1919 code should have had an increase of 20 instead of 12 per cent. and those under the 1945 code an increase of 15 instead of 12 per cent.
The second anomaly, which is the worst of all, is that of officers' widows pensionable before 4th November, 1958. I have examined the pension schemes of other countries and this is the worst anomaly that I have ever met in any pension scheme in any country. The pre-1958 widow is the only case of which I know where a so-called existing widow suffers from such a division between that of "existing" and "future" pensions. There are 5,600 "existing" officers' widows today who were be-

reaved before 1958 and they are more than half of all the Regular officers' widows. Under new increases, in the pre-1958 class a widow of a captain will get only £142 a year, and £162 a year if she is over 70. The widow of a lieutenant-colonel will get only £232 a year or £252 a year if she is over 70, These are very poor awards for the widows of men who have given such long service to their country.
"Future" widows, those after 1958, will receive one-third of their husband's retirement pension and the same increases as the officers in accordance with the code that they are under. I have called these elderly officers and the widows that I have mentioned, in an article that I wrote for the Officers' Pensions Society, which was syndicated all over the country, the new poor in our society, and I feel that they are rather a blot on our escutcheon because they probably inherited old houses in a bad state of repair, which they cannot keep up, and they are finding life very difficult indeed.

Mr. John Eden: Would not my hon. Friend agree that many of these are people whose husbands did not contribute to the National Insurance Act, 1948, and, therefore, they are not in a position to draw more than the National Insurance pensions? These are also the people who would be the last, whether one considers it to be right or wrong, who would turn to National Assistance for support, yet they are condemned to do this by virtue of the parsimonious treatment that they are receiving under these provisions.

Sir J. Smyth: I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that very important and pertinent point.
The last point which I want to mention is one which causes a great deal of bitterness in the Service, to my certain knowledge, and that is with regard to the commutation of pensions. Officers are allowed under certain conditions to commute half their retirement pension, the conditions being that they pass a medical examination, etc. We can be certain that the Exchequer sees to it that it does not lose under those arrangements, but the point is that when a pension increase is given those officers


who have commuted half their pension get only half the increase. I maintain that their pension as it originally was, was given for services rendered for a certain period, and I do not believe that anything should be allowed to alter that fact or that anything should be taken away. If the Government consider that the pension is insufficient and that an increase should be given, these people should get the whole of the increase.
Why do officers commute their pensions? In some cases, they may wish to buy a house, or use the money for some other special purpose, but in my experience by far the greater number of officers commute their pensions because they are acutely conscious of the miserable pension their widows will get. I therefore maintain that these people are made to suffer in two ways, and I ask my right hon. Friend to give very serious consideration to this matter—I know that it cannot be done today—when next these pensions come up for review. It is because of the Government's extremely good record over pensions of every sort over the past 11 years that I have hopes that my right hon. Friends will consider righting some of the anomalies I have mentioned which at very small cost to the Exchequer, could brighten the lives of a class of people to whom we all owe a very great deal.

9.2 p.m.

Dr. Horace King: It is indeed a pleasure to follow, if I may call him so, my friend the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth). He has paid tribute to the Chief Secretary in his former capacity as Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, and I would echo that tribute, but the right hon. and gallant Gentleman himself has no mean record of his own work when he served at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, of his work for the Far East prisoners of war, of his work for his less fortunate friends who hold the Victoria Cross, and of his work as governor of Roehampton. It is a pleasure to follow him.
We are now talking of ex-Service men, but for whose sacrifices in two world wars there would have been no House of Commons, no debate—no Britain

worth speaking about—and particularly about the older of those ex-Service men, and the widows of some of them.
I want, first, to echo the thanks accorded by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to the Minister of Health for the wonderful job that has just been accomplished for limbless ex-Service men. The new artificial limb for men with amputations below the knee is a scientific break-through, and B.L.E.S.M.A. has asked me to express tonight its thanks to the Minister, especially for the way in which he has consulted the limbless ex-Service men over the last twelve months while experimenting on the new limb. The Minister has brought them into full consultation, and I know from personal experience how much they appreciate it. After all, it is the men who have to use artificial limbs who are likely to know most about them.
The very wonder of this scientific and technical achievement demands that the fitting should be equally scientific. I shall not go into details, but will only mention that B.L.E.S.M.A. asks the Minister to make sure that everyone who fits a limbless ex-Service man with this new limb should be scientifically and technically trained in the fitting. It would be spoiling a good ship for a ha'p'orth of tar if we did not accompany every one of the new limbs of which I am speaking with what is called the multilateral artificial foot, the one which will move in a variety of ways, as distinct from the more old-fashioned bilateral one which moves only from side to side.
When we examined the new Pensions (Increase) Bill for civilians, some of us tried to show that the Bill treated unjustly older civilian pensioners, those who had suffered longest the erosion of their pensions and whose original pensions were very much smaller than those now granted after the same kind of work. We have just had striking examples of this in the figures given by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman.
Whatever is true of the civilian pensioner in this respect is true even more of the long retired Service pensioner. The Government give a 12 per cent. in crease in respect of pensions awarded before 1956 and then, realising the special hardships of old pensioners, they


add £20 for those over 70. This new feature for the civilian pensioner was quite a valuable one, and some of us welcomed it although we said that it did not go far enough in the case of very old civilian pensioners. but benefits far less the Service pensioner.
As the right hon. and gallant Gentleman pointed out, a Service man retires earlier. For instance, I am informed that, whereas 45 per cent. of Civil Service pensioners will receive some benefit under Clause 2 of the Pensions (Increase) Bill, only 15 per cent. of Armed Forces pensioners will get any benefit from that £20 lump sum at all.
The only really just way of dealing with older Service pensioners, as with the older civilian pensioners, is to extend the escalator percentages back into the years before 1956. Those who retired six and a half years ago will get the full 12 per cent. increase, but those who retired twenty or forty years ago will still receive only the 12 per cent. increase plus £20 if they are over 70. Many of those who retired as early as 1945 will be under 70 and will not receive the £20.
The Officers' Pensions Society suggests in this connection the kind of approach which we suggested in the debate on the Pensions (Increase) Bill, but which the Minister would not have. The Society suggests that there should be two new escalator features added to the Royal Warrant, 15 per cent. increase for the 1945 group and 20 per cent. for those who retired under the 1919 code. I believe that this is bare justice to the older Service pensioner and that the Government who have failed to concede something like this for the civilian pensioner should at least concede it to the Armed Forces pensioner.
A Service man under 60 will not receive a pension increase at all. This is the result of moving over the formula from civilian life, where 60 is the normal retiring age. I am informed that there are about 30,000 retired commissioned officers and many more men who, because they are under 60, will get no benefit from the pension increase at all. This age bar makes sense, I believe, for civilians where the normal retiring age is 60, but it is an injustice when we apply it to the Armed Forces, where the retiring age is mach earlier.
I will illustrate the disparities which exist, even after the granting of the increases for which we thank the Minister tonight. Since 1945, the cost of living has more than doubled, but a 1945 Service man's pension has increased by less than half. Since pre-war, the cost of living has more than trebled, but the pension of an old colonel pensioner has gone up by 58 per cent. if he is under 70, or, if he is over 70 and gets the £20 under the parallel provision to Clause 2, by only 61½ per cent. There has been a treble increase in the cost of living and just over a 50 per cent. increase in pension. If that is true of the colonel, it is true of every officer. These percentages roughly obtain throughout the ranks of Service men.
But we have always said that we should not merely compensate for the rise in the cost of living. What makes hardship harder to endure is a sense of injustice. The old, retired Service man undoubtedly feels this when he discovers that one who retires from exactly the same job that he was doing but some years later draws double the pension that he is drawing. This is a question not of charity for the Service men, although I am one of those who believe that "charity" is one of the loveliest words that the Greeks gave us and regret that it has been so misused in the past, but of simple justice for which these old men are asking.
All that I have said in many debates about widows applies, more than ever, if possible, to Service widows. The nonparty group in this House to which I belong, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary), constantly presses the claims of disabled ex-Service men, those who stumble about our streets, who were blinded or maimed in the defence of freedom. It is significant that these men, at their last annual conference, gave overwhelming priority to the demands that they are making for better treatment of Service widows. They placed it even before their demands for an upgrading of their own disability pensions, which is urgently due.
I think that this is right. No one makes greater sacrifices—perhaps not even the men who never came back—than the wives who lose their loved ones


and carry both the sorrow of bereavement and its bitter economic consequences for the rest of their lives, merely because their men were in the Armed Forces. But the present scales mean that some Service men's widows have to go to National Assistance to supplement their pension, especially, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) pointed out, if they are too old for their husbands to have qualified for National Insurance and if they are widows of disabled ex-Service men. As I pointed out to the Chief Secretary when he was Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, if their husbands die, very often after having been nursed through years of 100 per cent. disability by these women, and if the death cannot be attributed to their war wounds, it is very difficult for the Ministry to accept them as war widows.
The ordinary Service man's widow's pension is less than that of the Civil Service widow—a quarter compared with onethird—and I understand—I think that this is what the hon. and gallant Member for Norwood was calling attention to—that the proposals discriminate between what are called "existing widows", a strange title, those who were bereaved before 4th November, 1958, and what are called "future widows", an even stranger title, and that they distinguish between these two groups, both as regards widows' pension and children's allowances, to the disadvantage of the pre-November, 1958, widow. Having categories of widowhood is utterly absurd and wrong. I echo the plea of the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood to level up the pensions of existing widows and to bring them into the full benefits given to the post-November, 1958, widow.
I am a very simple man. I do not like receiving letters like the one which I shall read to the House. This lady writes:
I was so pleased to see that someone had kindly remembered the widows of this country. I get less income than a neighbour, whose husband is in prison, for receiving stolen goods, not his first time, either. Her National Assistance is larger than my Service pension. So much for husbands, who were heroes not so long ago.
After bringing up our children we have grown rusty over any training we had when young. And no one wants to retrain us.

So we get the dishwashing and sweeping up jobs. Three Service widows (over sixty) I know, whose husbands were killed in Hitler's war, have applied to National Assistance to eke out their tiny pensions. Our husbands didn't give their lives for their wives to live as paupers.
As long as somebody can write in that way—and I have no reason to doubt that what she says is true—wonderful as the work of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance over the post-war years has been, there is still something wrong with a system which allows a bitter letter like that to be written.
We are engaged in a process of bringing the pensions of various groups of pensioners who have been on pension for quite a long time a little more nearly into line with the rising cost of living and the rising standards of life in an affluent society. For Service men these new provisions are a step forward, but they do least justice to those who need the help the most—that is, those who have been on pension the longest.
Of all ex-Service men, those who concern me—and, indeed, everybody in the House—the most are the disabled. A 100 per cent. disabled ex-Service man gets 97s. 6d. a week. Since April, 1961, when this figure was granted, it has dropped in value—the figures are the Minister's—to 91s. 9d. I plead with the Government, now that they have tackled the general question of public service pensioners and, in the Royal Warrant, the question of Service pensioners in general, to turn at once, as a matter of urgency, to the pensions of disabled ex-Service men and to do some really hard thinking about the women whose terrible duty it has been to give the lives of their husbands to the country often after devoted nursing of war-shattered men.
In an earlier debate on this very topic, the hon. and gallant Member for the New Forest (Sir O. Crosthwaite-Eyre) expressed what should be the heart of our attitude to this question, when he said:
… if we really want a successful recruiting scheme our first job is to see that those who have served us in the past receive a proper tribute to their service. Let us not try to build for the future without acknowledging our duties to the past."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1956; Vol. 549, c. 625.]
At a recent memorial service that I attended to those who had died in the


war, the preacher reminded us that somewhere in the Far East, in Burma, is a memorial which simply says:
For your tomorrows we gave our todays.
It is in that spirit, I am certain, that every hon. Member who participates in the debate will be thanking the Government for what they have done in the proposals up to date, but begging them to improve them still further.

9.19 p.m.

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey: As the debate started rather late, I propose to limit my remarks, particularly as my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth), who opened the debate, made an excellent speech and covered fairly wide ground. To enable hon. Members on both sides to have more time to speak, I will spend only a few moments in referring to the widows.
As has been said, the Government have an excellent record in pensions, but why have they fallen short in dealing with the case of the Service widows? For several years- we have known—it has been quoted in debate after debate—the most pitiful circumstances in which these ladies are living. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) has given one instance and many of us have had similar letters. The gravest injustice of all is to widows who lost their husbands before 4th November, 1958. They have been callously discriminated against because, for the first time in the 200 years since the pensions were established, they have been dubbed "existing" widows.
Even in industry today much more is being done for widows in many cases than the Government are doing for these ladies we are discussing. I am a trustee of a works pension fund. As is the custom in recent years in forward-looking concerns, a considerable amount of the fund is invested in equities because, over a period of 15 or 20 years, the equities will keep pace with inflation and one can hand out extra payments to the widows.
This is a matter which must be looked at again. The pensions for future widows were improved to one-third of their husband's pay, but they were left on obsolete rates which the Grigg Committee described as derisory.

There are about 7,800 officers' widows on these rates, which it is proposed to increase by 12 per cent.
As we have been told, those over 70 will get an extra £20 a year. What will be the difference for a lady in her late 60s and ailing? She will still be worse off than she was 10 years ago. Many of these widows have to resort of National Assistance but, as we know, a great many others will not do so because their pride will not let them. If one tries to tell them that it is not National Assistance in that sense but a supplementary pension, they will not hear of it.
I had a letter earlier this year from an old lady who could not buy sufficient coal to keep her room warm. I cannot understand why these people are being ignored to this extent. It is disgraceful that elderly widows should be subjected to such poverty and misery. I understand that Armed Forces' pensions have been dictated by the Royal Prerogative and that recipients are unable to argue their case. Similar increases designed for civil pensioners are applied to them, to their detriment. The Royal Prerogative should be exercised to ensure that this is no longer the case.
I ask for a biennial review of these pensions, and, indeed, for my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who has done so much for pensioners, to go somewhat further. Vast sums are being spent on various enterprises—defence, education and social services. Why do we treat widows worse, I imagine, than probably any other nation in the world? I hope that my right hon. Friend will let us have the figures of what other nations pay widows in similar circumstances. I make the strongest protest in the words at my command in asking that something should be done for these ladies right away.

9.23 p.m.

Commander Harry Pursey: The right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) put the case for officers and their wives, as has the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey). I make no complaint about that. But officers' salaries are discussed in terms of thousands of pounds while their widows' pensions are discussed in terms of hundreds


of pounds, and not a word has been said about the widows of other ranks.
The Government fixed November, 1958, as a dividing line in these pensions. The widows of other ranks who died before then got nothing at all, but one never hears of that from hon. Members opposite. The lower other ranks do not now get anything like the pensions which have been referred to tonight. They do not get a total pension per year of £100. What is required in the allocation of money for pensions is a great reduction in the vast disparity between the pensions of officers and the pensions of other ranks—in other words, a better distribution of the money.
There should be fair shares for all, the "old sweats" as well as the "brass-hats" Perhaps some of the later Tory speakers will deal with the law pensions of men, and particularly those paid to widows of other ranks. When mention is made of National Assistance, it should be remembered that practically all the widows of other ranks are on National Assistance, unless they go out to work.
Tonight's subject is mainly long service pensions, not disability pensions, but as we are on the Adjournment Motion the debate is wide open. I make no complaint about that, but I hope to devote my speech to long-service pensions. This is the first debate arranged by the Government on increases in the Armed Services long-service pensions. This is the purpose of the debate as a corrolary to the Pensions (Increase) Act for the Civil Service.

Dame Irene Ward: Hear, hear.

Commander Pursey: I thank the hon. Lady. I have one Tory member to support me, though I expect to lose the hon. Lady's support in due course.
As I was saying, this is the first debate arranged by the Government on the increase in long-service pensions, although there have been four previous increases since the war. One reason is that this Tory Government have no wish to advertise the miserably low rates of Service pensions for which they have been responsible during the last eleven years, particularly those paid to other ranks.
A large number of these n.c.o.s and other ranks are receiving mere pittances.

Only £1 per week or less is paid to an able seaman or private, and only 30s. or less to a petty officer or n.c.o. after twenty-two or more years' service for Queen and country. Incredible though it may sound, a large number of other ranks pensioned since the last war are receiving a lower rate of pension than men pensioned after the First World War, forty years ago. In fact, there are men still being paid pensions under the Crimean War scheme and earlier schemes. They are being paid a pension of ½d. per day per year of service, with further halfpennies for petty officer service, and farthings for leading seaman service. [Laughter.] I do not know what the joke is. I suggest to the Chief Secretary that this is a very serious matter. He does not know the first thing about it, nor do the other Ministers sitting beside him. Had they known, they would have done something about it long ago.
Moreover, no scale increase at all has been made in the pensions of men discharged at 40 during the seventeen years since the last war, and none will be made for several years for many men until they reach the age of 60. In other words, these pension increases which we are now considering for men who are 60, generally speaking—because there is a disability Clause—can apply only to men due for pension twenty years ago, that is, in 1942 or earlier.
Our last debate on pensions was on a private Member's Motion on 25th May, 1962, and as a result of my speech on that occasion I received a deluge of pitiable letters and complaints, and this month, as a result of a letter to the Press, I received a further deluge of cases which are quite pathetic. Many of these people are on National Assistance. I am, therefore, able today to deal with actual cases of serious human interest in this curious network of pension anomalies and niggardliness.
The House tonight is not concerned with the current rate of pensions paid on discharge, but in view of the tributes paid to the Government it is right to put on record the present basic rate for an able seaman and a private, namely, £2 7s. 8d. At the beginning of the year they were entitled to a 5 per cent. increase, but the Government refused this and paid them only 2½ per cent. Instead of receiving £2 11 s. 4d. for these six


months they received only £2 7s. 8d., so that even now, in spite of the basic increase, the pension is 10s. less than National Assistance, and is still far below subsistence level.
My main concern tonight is to sound a clarion call for Britain's forgotten army—the thousands of n.c.o.s and men from all three Services who have been discharged since V-day and who are in the twenty years "no-man's-land" age group of 40–60, and who, consequently, have not received a penny increase from any of the pensions increase schemes in the last seventeen years.

Captain Walter Elliot: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman give way?

Commander Pursey: Certainly. The hon. and gallant Member is bound to help me. He is bound to waste time, and confuse the position more than it is confused now.

Captain Elliot: I believe that the figures he has given refer to able seamen after twenty or twenty-two years' service. He will remember that for the last few years there have been far greater opportunities for these men to earn quite a good pension if they serve for another five or ten years.

Commander Pursey: The hon. and gallant Gentleman ought not to intervene in a subject about which he knows practically nothing. On 27th June, 1962, HANSARD printed a schedule of all the pensions. I do not want to spoil my speech by taking up the point made by the hon. and gallant Member. With respect, he is just talking arrant nonsense, and wasting time.
I wish to expose the grave injustices done to these veterans of the war, and to make a special appeal on behalf of large categories of "old sweats" who are not yet 60 but who were pensioned, first, in the five years from 1945 to 1949 or later, on the old 1919 basic rates of, for example, £1 2s. 9d. for an able seaman, and, secondly, in the period from 1945 to 1956 at the new 1945-50 basic rate of £1 6s. 4d. for all three Services.
Furthermore, some 1930 basic rate pensioners are receiving even less pension than is provided on those 1919 and 1945 rates. A private in the Lincolnshire Regiment, pensioned since the war after

twenty-three years' service, receives only 14s. per week, or 2s. per day. Let hon. Members try to 'aught that one off! This is 4s. 4½d. less than the Army, 1919, basic rate of 18s. 4½d., established after the First World War, over twenty-five years earlier.
Even with the 5d. per day Service age pension at 55 the pension now, seventeen years later, is only 16s. 11d. per week—about half the present pension. What a pension! Please note that this is not a freak case; 14s. is the 1930 basic rate for all three Services, with slight variations in respect of periods of service of twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-four years.
How did these miserable pensions grow up? Like Topsy. In 1831, the foundation stone was laid by William IV. There was an Order in Council on 24th August. I have my own copy if the hon. and gallant Gentleman would like to borrow it. The rate was ½d. per day pension per year of service of twenty years' service, giving 10d. per day, or 5s. 10d. a week. This pension is given in the schedule of the Minister of Defence and is referred to in the OFFICIAL REPORT of 27th June, 1962, which I have mentioned. It is still being paid to the older Chelsea pensioners.
So that there may be no question of dealing with history I will bring this figure right up to date. It was awarded for eighty-eight years until 1919 and was my pension rate when I served on the lower deck. Additions for petty officer and leading seamen service were ½d. and a ¼d. respectively per day per year of service. These amounts were awarded until 1949 or later. I had a letter today from the Minister of Defence saying that he does not know when they stopped. Such pensions are still being paid and will be for many more years. In 1865, the Admiralty offered the Greenwich Hospital pensioners 5d. a day alt 55 and later another 4d., at 70, to leave the hospital. Otherwise, pensioners would still be at the Royal Naval College, as are Army pensioners at Chelsea Hospital.
In 1876, payment consisted of ld. per day pension and, with good conduct and badges of merit, the pension totalled 6d. In 1855, the service increased to twenty-two years and the Admiralty refused to pay the two extra


halfpennies. In 1887, thirty-two years later, the Admiralty agreed to pay the two extra halfpennies. In 1919, after the First World War, there was a new basic rate, but the 1831 rate was continued and the ½d. per day was trebled to 1½d. a day. This basic rate was 2s. 9d. per day or 19s. 3d. a week. The 6d. for good conduct remained. The age pay continued at 5d. at 55 and 4d. at 65 to be paid to all pensioners. This 1½d. per day rate continued for twenty-six years until 1945 and was awarded until 1949 and it is still being paid to thousands of pensioners from all three Services.
For the Army the same basic rate of 18s. 4½d. per week obtained for twenty-one years. For the Royal Air Force it was 21s. per week because they served twenty-four years. This is the basic rate for which we are tonight discussing increases, over forty years after its introduction. In 1925, the 4d. age increase at 65 was abolished. In 1930, the new reduced basic rates were: Army, 14s.; Navy, 14s. 8d.; and Royal Air Force, 16s. with the 5d. increase at 55 only, and a Navy reduction of 4s. 7d. in 1945. On 19th December, after the Second World War, there was a new basic rate, a flat-rate of £1 6s. 4d. with no additions and twenty-two years' service for all three Services.
Incredible though this may sound, the increase for the R.A.F. was only a single Id. more than the 1919 basic rate with the addition. Check the HANSARD schedule. For naval pensioners the old 1919 rate—with good conduct and age increases, namely, £1 8s.—was higher than the new rate of £1 6s. 4d. So my Lords graciously offered them the option of the old 1919 rate or the new 1945 rate. What a scheme! What a pension!
The dice were further loaded against the new scheme because the Admiralty stated that the old 1919 rate would be increasable by the age additions and also at the age of 60 by the 1944–47 Pensions (Increase) Acts and any further Acts. This was 9s. 10d. more. On the other hand, the new £1 6s. 4d. would be for life, and
it would not be increasable by the award of age additions nor under the Pensions (Increase) Acts.

The HANSARD schedule shows the 1945 rate to have been three times increased to £2 2s. 4d., but no one since pensioned at 40 has yet been able to draw these three increases and this pension. In other words, that is all "pie in the sky", on paper, waiting for them to come of age at 60. The option remained open until 1949 or later and different men gambled different ways, for a slight increase forthwith and a fixed rate for life, or for a low scale for fifteen years and then an increase of 5d. a day and an increase five years later at 60.
So much for the facts. What has been the result in actual pensions being paid today? The general Army figure of the 1919 pension now being paid to privates below 60 is only £1 1s. 3½d. This is the basic 18s. 4½d. which some still draw, plus the 5d. per day increase at 55. There are also odd variations such as £1 4s. and £1 5s. 6d. Even these higher pensions are only about a half of the present-day pension of £2 7s. 8d. for a private. The n.c.o. with a basic rate of £1 3s. 8d. and three increases in 1952, 1956 and 1959 receives only £1 18s., which is 9s. 8d. less than the current rate for a private.
How ridiculous can we become? I shall give a few picked Army examples to prove my case. A real "old sweat" joined the Suffolk Regiment in 1900 at the time of the Boer War. He is 83 and was pensioned under the 1919 scale in 1921 at 18s. 4½d. He has drawn this for over forty years, admittedly with increases, but those only in recent years. When the first pension increase was made in 1946, after waiting twenty-five years, he was 68, but he was ruled out by the means test. At some stage he was overpaid £90, so the War Office clawed back that £90 which meant two years of his pension "gone west".
Even now at his great age, with four increases—my hon. Friend said the older men were well off-he receives only £2 11s., or 6s. 6d. less than National Assistance and less than next year's private's pension of £2 1ls. 4d. This is "a man who never was" as far as the Secretary of State for War is concerned because, although his pension has been calculated to two decimal places, the right hon. Gentleman says that there is no such case. The short point is that the War Office does not know what pensions it is paying.
The following cases are Second World War ones. In 1946, twenty years' service, now aged 54, 1ls. 4½d.—1s. above the amount received by the 10s. widow about whom we hear so much. In 1945, twenty-two years' service, 14s., 1930 rate; after an argy-bargy with the War Office, he was given the 1919 18s. 4½d.; even now, at 11th December, 1962, at the age of 60 and with four increases, his pension is only £2 6s. 11d. In 1945, nineteen and a half years, 14s. 3½d., and the explanation:
I came out of the R.A. with group 14 I explained I was in for 21 years. They were not interested. I was in group 14 and out I had to come. On 19th September, 1962, I was 55 and received the 5d. per day, and my pension is now 17s. 2d.
Numerous other cases could be quoted.
I turn now to naval cases. The A.B.'s 1919 basic rate is 19s. 3d., and, if lucky, plus 6d. for good conduct, badges and medals. Many are still drawing only £1 2s. 9d. Others have reached 55 and are receiving the 5d., but this gives them only £1 5s. 8d. Petty officers since the Second World War are being paid such low pensions as £1 6s. 3d., £1 7s. 7d., £1 9s. 6d., and £1 9s. 9d. Their basic rate is also the £1 2s. 9d. for able seamen with additions for leading seamen and petty officers.
I wish to establish once and for all, particularly with hon. Members opposite, that these additions are the 1831 halfpennies and farthings previously referred to, that these ridiculous amounts are still being paid and will continue to be paid until the end of this century. Undated Admiralty documents issued with the option of the 1919 or 1945 pension stated for the former:
Rank additions for each year of service as leading rate ½d. a day and as petty officer ¼d. a day.
I will give examples of the current pension, and I will give them at dictation speed for the benefit of hon. Members opposite and I hope that they will be able to take them in, and it will also make it much easier for the Official Reporters. I hope that hon. Members opposite will be able to follow me. If they lose me, they may stop me and I will recapitulate:
Eight years 360 days as P.O. and C.P.O. rank at double Petty time (plus 110 days C.P.O. allowance) allows 18 complete years at ½d. for each year's service as such, equals 9d. Balance at 100 days C.P.O. and P.O. time

doubled and added to six years—138 days service as Leading rate at double Petty time, allows 13 complete years at a farthing a day for each year's service as such, equals 3¼d.
According to my arithmetic the total addition is 1s. 0½d.—and that is quoted from an Admiralty pensions letter. With the A.B.'s basic of 2s. 9d. a day plus 6d. for good conduct, equals 3s. 3d., the extra 1s. 0¼d. gives a pension of 4s. 3¼d. per day or £1 9s. 10¾d. per week. These calculations are what is known as multiple values. This is explained in the dictionary as
symbols which fulfil the algebraic conditions of a problem when different values are given them.

Captain John Litchfield: The very last thing I want to do is to waste time, but as the hon. and gallant Member has been in play for 30 minutes and is presumably coming up to about half time, may I ask whether he does not think that his remarks would be assisted by allowing other hon. Members on both sides of the House to support him?

Commander Pursey: It certainly would have been so if I had not been interrupted. I could quote other low pensions. There must be thousands of them. I thought that my classic case was that of a son receiving double the pension paid his father. I now have an even better illustration in which a younger brother has a pension which is double that of his elder brother. Could anything be crazier?
What do the pensioners think about these petty pensions? I hope that I shall be successful in translating a few lower deck and barrack room remarks into Parliamentary language. One writes:
I hope that I won't be charged under the Official Secrets Act for sending you the official documents with details of my lousy pension.
Musicians have low pensions. One writes:
I have played 'Rule Britannia' all round the world and I'm now playing Rule Britannia' about my blank blank pension.
Another writes:
My low pension would be a good advertisement for recruiting. I don't think I would make a good recruiting sergeant.
A petty officer asks:
Were pre-1950 Regular Forces only third class, as the difference in pensions—only one-third—seems to suggest?


A war record runs:
Battle of River Plate, the Mediterranean, Matapan, evacuation of Crete and Greece, Malta bombardments, came home for a rest, instead Russian convoys, and finally Far East. All for £1 4s. 10d.—22 years' service but no increase in pension.
A countryman writes:
When I joined, a farm labourer's wage was 22s. 6d. and the prospect of £1 a week pension was something. Today, farm labourers' wages are £9 or £10, and good luck to them. But my basic pension is the same quid a week as when I joined.
Other comparisons are:
When I first drew my low pension, it would pay the rent. Now it won't pay the rates.
Another:
My idea, when in the Service, of a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop has gone west; my present pension wouldn't keep me in cigarettes—if I could afford to smoke.
Many pensioners are reluctant for friends and even relations to know their pensions. Others take steps to avoid their pensions being known. One cycles three miles to the next village so that his village will not know his pittance. What a sorry state of affairs and what a serious check on recruiting. Naturally, some say, "Do not join the Forces. The Government will always let you down. If you do, join as late as possible to reduce the twenty years wait for 60. If you have joined, get out as early as possible. You will do better outside".
Pensioned at 40 a chief stoker gets a job as a stoker, instead of being in charge. A chief petty officer becomes a labourer in a dockyard. Pensioners are forced to take the lowest jobs and private employers, particularly in personal jobs, often consider the pension when arranging wages.
What emerges from this investigation? [AN HON. MEMBER: "TOO long a speech."] Why did you let them lose all the time in the previous debate? Anyhow, there is an extension until eleven o'clock. What are you in trouble about?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Our practice, to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman must conform, is that observations are addressed to the Chair.

Commander Pursey: I apologise, Mr. Speaker.
What emerges from this investigation is: first, the several pension basic rates; secondly, the half dozen or so scales since the war; thirdly, the multiplicity of payments to other ranks, which provide nearly as many permutations as the football pools. I have no hesitation in saying that the present Armed Service pension system for other ranks of a low basic scale at 40 with long delayed occasional cost of living dole increases on a percentage basis but not for twenty years is a national scandal which in the Tory so-called affluent society should have been abolished long ago.
The Armed Forces are the only State service who have to wait for twenty years, but actually it is only the other ranks, because the officers—take naval officers, for example—retire at 45, 50, 55 and 60, according to rank, and so receive the age-60 increase with much less delay than the ratings.
What should be done to clear up this pensions confusion? There are three obvious answers. First, there should be one rate for the job, namely, the same pension for the same rating for the same period of service, whatever the date of pension. Secondly, in future when pensions are increased for serving men pensions already in payment should also be increased by the same amount. As has been said, the Government have accepted the principle of a biennial review for future pensions. Why not for present pensions? Thirdly, pending one rate for the job, a worth-while pension increase should be made forthwith to those thousands in the seventeen years since the war who have been on the low pensions and received no increase under the Pensions (Increase) Act. In point of fact, it is not the older ones. It is the ones that have received no increases at all.
Why have these miserable pensions continued for so long, the majority for nearly half a century? The only reason is that Service pensioners are not organised like the National Federation of Old Age Pensions Association, or the Police Federation. Moreover, if officers and their wives were suffering to the same extent as the men and their wives the senior admiral of the Navy, the senior field marshal of Army and the senior


marshal of the Royal Air Force would petition the Government and publish letters in The Times and elsewhere.
Why do not senior officers press the case for justice for the men who trained them and made their success possible? I challenge Tory Members to press the case for redress for the men as they have done for the officers, and in consequence for themselves. The Government, aware of no action by anyone, including M.P.s, are trading on the loyalty of the Regular forces, both in the Services and outside, and I warn the Government that they cannot retain loyalty at half price and still get the recruits they need.
The newspapers and even the experts of the B.B.C. make no attempt to really explain this injustice. It seems that they consider the problems involved to be far too complex for them to expose in a proper way. Yet once the facts are assembled any journalist would soon discover that a strong human interest story can be produced.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on any Motion for the Adjournment of the House moved by a Minister of the Crown exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for One Hour after Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Boyd Carpenter.]

ARMED FORCES (PENSIONS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Rees.]

Commander Pursey: As I was saying, once all the facts are assembled a genuine human interest story could be told about the mere pittance which is paid for long service in the three Services. There can be no doubt that, if this were done, the Government would have to act. The eight Tory Members who represent constituencies in Portsmouth, Devonport and Chatham could be ousted at the next election by a proper pnesions campaign.
I challenge the Press, the B.B.C., all hon. Members and the Government to see

that justice, including an immediate increase, is done for the silent forgotten army of n.c.o.s and other ranks and, particularly, for the widows who are receiving no pension at all. I also appeal for those who are drawing long-service pensions which represent a national scandal and a disgrace to Parliament, which is wholly responsible.

10.2 p.m.

Dame Irene Ward: I hope that the Secretary of State for War and his Service colleagues will look into the case put by the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston-upon-Hull, East (Commander Pursey) and I imagine that the whole House will express the hope that we shall hear in detail after the Christmas Recess an adequate answer to that case. I do not want to delay the House, because a great deal remains to be said on this wide topic by a number of hon. Members. I should like, firstly, to support the case so adequately made by hon. Members on both sides of the House on the general issue of Service pensions for retired officers, for widows and for other ranks.
There are two points I should like to address to the Financial Secretary and to the Secretary of State for War. I listened the other day to the statement about compensation in respect of those who suffered loss of property in Egypt. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs went out of his way to explain in great detail that under the Government's proposals, the people who had the most would get the least and that the people who had the least would get the most.
I should like the Secretary of State for War to explain why, if that is the policy for foreign affairs—and those proposals must have had the support of the Cabinet—when we come to discuss Service pensions, the exact opposite is the rule of the day. While I welcome the proposals for the increases under the Royal Warrant, my objection is that the whole scheme has not been looked at in sufficient detail to obtain what is fair and just for those concerned.
I throw this out merely as a suggestion. If the amount of compensation payable to people who lost their property in Egypt is based on the smallest amount for the people who had the most and the most compensation for the people


who had the least, why cannot we apply that to Service pensioners? After all, the general complaint about the present scheme is that, with the sole exception of the bonus at the age of 70, the scheme is exactly the same as it was before. Like a great many of my hon. Friends, I am getting a little tired of the fact that after years of drawing the attention of the Government to what we—the House of Commons; in other words, democracy—consider inequalities which need to be dealt with, the Government pay not the slightest attention to us. After years of trying to get Service pension improvements my right hon. Friend has produced the same sort of scheme as existed before. We believe that when the House of Commons speaks with one voice, as indeed it has dome, Her Majesty's Government ought to take some notice of it.
I want to make one other point, for the record, on the question of Service widows. The case has been argued from both sides of the House very effectively and all the figures have been given, but the argument will probably come from my right hon. Friend that the greatest percentage increase has been given to these special categories before 1958. But that is not the point. The percentage is not nearly enough. The basic pension is far too low. I would once more draw the attention of my right hon. Friend to the fact that the basic pension of Service widows has not been altered for a hundred years. I cannot blame the Secretary of State for War for that, or indeed the present Government; but I want to have it put on the record that how the heads of the Service Departments could have allowed that position to go on year after year, I simply cannot understand.
I want to add this letter to the record as an indication of what I mean by the fact that the basic pension is far too low for Service widows before the new date, and that, therefore, the precentage increase is, as I think was said in the Grigg Report, derisory. This is a letter from the widow of a naval commander:
When I heard on my wireless one day last week that the Government had dealt with the civil servants and service pensions, and that the figure they mentioned was 12½ per cent. or 12 per cent, increase I almost jumped from my bed in delight. I hastily got out a pencil and pad

and began to work out what 12 per cent. would be of £161 14s. Id. With decreasing enthusiasm I found that 12½ per cent. would be £20 ls. 9d. a year, so that my pension would now be £181, if I was included in this category. It would mean that my £13 9s. a month would become about £14 18s. 6d.! I deflated slowly. Then I went to unlock my flat, and on my doormat were two letters. One was from the Officers' Families Housing Association saying that owing to our Charlton Kings rates going up, my rent will be increased by £8 a year, and the second one was from my brother-in-law saying that as his stocks and shares were in such a shaky state he was sorry he was unable to send me his usual £5 birthday present, but he enclosed a card of good wishes. I sat down and cried my eyes out! Surely, if the present widows' get £310 a year and that has been considered due for increase how can they think we older widows can cope on £181? I cannot understand it. Last week I had exactly 2s. 10d. to feed myself on for the whole week, because I had to have my shoes soled and heeled and they were 12s. 10d. (and not sewn at that!) I can only allow 15s. for my food, so when an item like this comes along, housekeeping has to go. I cancelled my milk, had tea without milk, and a 1s. 1½d. loaf of bread and margarine were my meals. I do not ever want to have to do this again, and the irony of it was to find a dear little envelope pushed through my door for relief of hunger in Africa—Oxfam. I found a fellow feeling, but could only spare them 1d., I am afraid. I have to haunt jumble sales for clothes like some old second-hand clothes dealer. I feel degraded but am thankful for them. For my summer holiday, for which I had been saving up for three years, I found when I had booked in at the bed-and-breakfast boarding house (spotlessly clean) and had booked my fare there and back, I had exactly 2s. 4d. to spend during my week's holiday. I went, and I sat all day in a shelter loving the glorious sea-air, wind, rain, the lot. It was heaven, and was I hungry by night time, as you can imagine. The young think elderly people are boring because they live in the past but what future is there?
That widow goes on to explain what life was like when her husband was in the Service. I simply cannot understand how Her Majesty's Government can allow older Service widows to get into this terrible condition.
I am very grateful, as I have said before, that we have the Royal Warrant with some pensions increases, but I cannot understand why my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Service Ministers did not go into the whole question. I am not in the least interested whether, if we give someone something, someone else happens to have 2s. less than before. The wit of all our Cabinet can surely find an answer to all this, and that is what I am looking for.
I repeat one suggestion that I have made, which is that it would have been much fairer to have put into one category all the retired officers and officers' widows and, if it were appropriate—because I cannot go into all the detail entered into by the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East—the other ranks as well, who are not able to qualify for the retirement pension because they have not had an opportunity to pay the contribution, and to have put in another category all those who were in a position to contribute and get the pension, and divide the money fairly. We might then have gone in the right direction for the solution of this very difficult problem.
The Secretary of State for War will no doubt give a lot of figures in a very charming way, and try to point out what has happened—or what he thinks has happened—but it will all be "hooey", because it will not be based on the facts of life. We have to accept the Royal Warrant as it is, there is nothing else we can do, but I want a firm assurance from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, here and now, that the Chief Secretary, after examining what machinery can be put into operation to make sure that we do not again have to go through this terrible business of trying to help these people, will tell us that the position of these older people will be looked at seriously and humanely, and a real attempt made to alter it. If he does that, he will have the thanks of the whole House and, for once, democracy will have triumphed over the Executive.

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: Over the years, it seems to have become more and more accepted on both sides of the House that hon. Members have a special responsibility to those members of the community who have a just claim on the community, but who are in a weak bargaining position to succeed in their claim. I am sure that all hon. Members will agree that the existing widows—possibly the most unhappy description one could possibly think of—are precisely in that situation. I am sure that it will be agreed on both sides that they have a just claim on the community, and, further, that it would be hard to imagine a body of people in a weaker bargaining position to succeed in their claim. There-

fore, a very special responsibility for these people rests upon hon. Members.
We must face reality. It has been said that there has been a 12 per cent. increase in the existing widow's pension. That is so, of course, and it is a large percentage increase, but it must be remembered that the initial pension was so pitifully small that the increase meant very little. The extra £20 for the over-70s was extremely acceptable but, again, it is very small when one takes into account the small size of the initial pension.
I take the example which has already been cited, the captain's widow over 70 years of age. I think that I am right in saying that her present pension is £162 7s. Putting it bluntly, if she were prepared to go on National Assistance, and if she were paying a modest rent, she would be better off without the pension, living on National Assistance.
This is not a partisan matter. We should all feel thoroughly ashamed of ourselves because we let this state of affairs continue. This group of people—I am told that there are only just over 5,000 of them now—have been very shabbily treated. This is parsimony. They have been kept in a state of penury, and we all ought to determine that the present state of affairs shall continue no longer.
I entirely sympathise with the points made by the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) about other ranks' widows who are not provided with any pension. That is indefensible. Nevertheless, I am sure that he will, on reflection, agree that that situation being indefensible is no argument against trying to right the injustice from which the existing widows suffer today.
I turn now to pensions generally. There have been references to the various codes. It is ridiculous that there should be so many codes today. The Government have frequently made clear that they are not prepared to accept the principle of parity in Service pensions. Nevertheless, it would be an enormous advantage if the greater inequities which exist were swept away. For example, why could not all the codes prior to 1956 be swept away so that all those whose pension codes date from before 1956 were now to enjoy the 1956 code? There would thus be only two codes, which would be an advantage, and it would be an advantage


based on principle. One of the difficulties of introducing an increase of £20 here and there is that we introduce further anomalies into the pension system which it would be very difficult to justify.
Thirdly, and lastly, I wish to add my plea to that of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) that there should be a biennial review of Service pensions. That would have one inestimable advantage, namely, that it would take Service pensions and, if possible, all pensions out of political controversy. I believe that in this day and age we appreciate that the Government have responsibilities to the taxpayer, but, nevertheless, I speak, perhaps, for a younger generation in this House in saying that we are conscious of the fact that we also owe a responsibility to those who served the country well.
Surely the Government should consider very carefully the possibility of having a biennial review of pensions so that this difficult subject is removed, as far as possible, from the field of political controversy.

10.21 p.m.

Mr. Antony Buck: I am most grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) for confining his remarks within a narrow compass, which enables me to address the House for a short time.
A long series of hardship pension cases has been cited to the House. I could similarly cite from constituents who write to me and others many cases of hardship, particularly among widows, both those who have no pensions and those who have minute pensions.
Since little time remains, I should like to deal with the matter of principle. On what principle should these pensions generally be awarded? It was stated by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary on 9th November, when he said that the Government should intervene—I do not quote precisely what he said, but I think that this is the sense of it—to take account of the hardship of their former employees, speaking more generally, especially when that hardship has arisen through no fault of their own. No one would quarrel with that principle, but does it go far enough?
The other two possibilities are to tie the pension to the cost of living or to the current rate of pay. I would discard the first. I do not think it appropriate to tie Service pensions or public officer pensions generally to the cost of living. There is great force in the argument that no class of society should be insulated completely from the vicissitudes of the economy. Further, this would involve there being an infusion into the economy of extra spending power at, perhaps, the start of an inflationary spiral, and this would stimulate the spiral or make it greater to the detriment of the country. I, therefore, think that it is right to discard the possibility of tying pensions to the cost of living.
The second possibility—to tie the rates of pension of the Armed Forces to the current rate of pay—should commend itself to the Government. I am reinforced in recommending this because I recall the words of my right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio. I mentioned to him earlier that I proposed to refer to what he said. As a Government supporter on the back benches, I take very great note of what Cabinet Ministers say, but I also notice what they said before they became Cabinet Ministers.
On 25th May, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) was most firmly in favour of the scheme by which pensions were tied to the current rate of pay. This seems to me to be right. What difference can there conceivably be between a man who gave Service to the country in the 1914–18 war or thereafter and one who has given service recently? If this proposal is discarded on the ground of cast, then let us have the figures so that we can see what a scheme such as that suggested by my right hon. Friend would cost. He suggested a pension of about 40 per cent. of pay at the current rate. This seems to be fair and equitable. On this basis, how much would it cost? Similarly, widows' pensions could be tied to a proportion of the current rate of pay which their spouses, if still living, would be receiving. Therefore, as a matter of principle, I commend to my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench that they should heed the words of their Cabinet colleague the right hon. Member for Ashford and adopt the scheme which he suggested to the House on 25th May.
In the few minutes that remain, I should like to mention one further matter, which also arises from the speech of my right hon. Friend who is now the Minister without Portfolio. In the debate on 25th May, which was more far-ranging and involved a wider class of pensioners than we are considering today, he suggested for pensioners from the Commonwealth territories the creation of a loan fund to top up their pensions. There is something to be said for considering something like that to assist Service pensioners and especially other-rank pensioners.
One of the matters which I have in mind is the difficulty experienced by a serving man in getting a house when he leaves the Forces. Some of the letters which I receive from Service men which upset me the most are from people who are now being turned off council housing lists because on their discharge they receive fairly substantial payment and have a bounty, perhaps, of £1,000. Because of this, they are turned off many council housing lists.
A man who leaves the Service, albeit with a certain amount of money—say, £1,000 or more—does not want initially to have to put down the whole of it to purchase a house. He is not in as favourable a position as people who have been able to accumulate furniture, and establish a permanent home. He does not at once know exactly where he wants to settle for the rest of his life. He needs a house which he can rent.
I suggest that the ex-Service organisations—.the British Legion, S.S.A.F.A. and the others—should consider whether to form a housing association to be registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1893, to take advantage of the Housing Act, 1961, whereby the Government can make money available to such housing associations for houses to let. This would enable a Service man at the end of his service to go into such a house, perhaps only for a short time until he finds his feet and knows where he wants to live and can reorientate himself generally to civilian life. This is especially important until the Government adopt the criterion which I have suggested of tying the rate of pension to the existing pay for the job. Some of the people whom I have in mind have been out of the

Services for some little time, and I envisage their being able to take advantage of such a scheme as I have suggested, if it were started, as well as other men as they leave the Services.
I associate myself with what has been said about making the pension code more simple. It is absurd to have seven separate codes for officers and about five codes divided into two for other ranks. Although we do our best, this makes the whole pensions business incredibly complicated for us to understand. We highly commend the Government for the proposed increases, but many cases of hardship still remain and I suggest that the principle which I suggested in the earlier part of my speech might well be adopted by the Government.

10.28 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: Forces pensions have recently become the Cinderella of our debates. The other week we were squeezed out altogether and tonight we are seriously curtailed. I would have felt better had the first Order of the Day been the more pressing subject. I say that with due respect to the British Museum. This has not been a satisfactory debate, because there are hon. Members on both sides who still wish to speak.
This is a most important subject and the Leader of the House was mistaken in thinking that the debate could be covered by the debates on the Pensions (Increase) Bill. They are two quite different subjects, although similarities in treatment run through them both. As, however, the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) pointed out, there are dissimilarities in the structure of pensions for the Armed Forces and the Civil Service and other civilian parts of the public sector.
The right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood opened the debate in a mood of good will towards the Government, fully in keeping with the Christmas spirit. That is what we expect of him, because he is a generous-minded hon. Member of this House and, if I may say so, rather too uncritical of Her Majesty's Government in this respect. He said that the Government have an extremely good record in pensions matters and he added that this was the sixth pension increase since the war and that this was


the crowning glory of Her Majesty's Government in this respect.
But in the debates that we had on the recent Pensions (Increase) Bill there was a good deal of criticism of the fact that we had had six Pensions (Increase) Measures since the war. It was regarded as a condemnation of the treatment of public service pensioners. It was clear proof that pensions had been paid in bad money almost continuously, and it required frequent Pensions (Increase) Measures to meat obvious hardship.
In the debate on the Pensions (Increase Bill) the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made a statement which, I hope, applies to Armed Forces pensions as well as to civilian pensions. He was pressed very strongly during the debate on that Bill to try to find a better method than the ad hoc way of introducing pensions increases from time to time without reference to any agreed criteria and almost at the hazard of parliamentary time and other political considerations.
The Minister said that he would try to find a better solution. I will quote his words:
I shall endeavour to find a better one, which will enable the consideration of all these very human and important matters to be a little more smooth and a little more effective, in some ways, than is the present procedure. I will try to do that, and I give that undertaking to the Committee."—(OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th November, 1962; Vol. 667, c. 1163.]
I hope that that assurance holds good for the main subject that we are discussing now.
That enables me to say that the arrangements regarding the review of Forces pensions, in common with public service pensions generally, are most unsatisfactory, haphazard and even capricious. The Grigg Committee in Cmnd. 545, of October, 1958, recommended in paragraph 116 that biennial reviews of pay should also cover pensions and that pensions should normally take into account movements in pay. As far as I know, Her Majesty's Government have remained silent on that review. There was nothing about it in Cmnd 675 or in the White Paper of February, 1959. I assume, therefore, that the Government have left that to be dealt with alongside pensions increase legislation generally. We hope that we shall get something more satisfactory in future than linking

Forces pensions increases to Pensions (Increase) Bills which themselves have neither regularity nor agreed principles.
The Pensions (Increase) Act was given the Royal Assent a few hours ago. Therefore, I assume that the draft Prerogative Instruments are almost in the hands of the Minister. The Government know what they are going to do about Forces pensions. It is all there now, surely. It must be promulgated very quickly because the increases are to be effective from 1st January, so I am sure that the Government are ready, or almost ready, to say what they propose to do.
I think that it is one of the great disadvantages of our constitution that we are not able to discuss Prerogative Instruments. We never get the opportunity to debate the practical proposals that the Government intend to implement. That puts us in a very unsatisfactory position. All we can do is talk generally on this topic, leaving the Government to advise Her Majesty on the Prerogative Instrument to be promulgated. Thereafter, we cannot debate it, either. If we are to modernise our procedure, I hope that this will be one of the matters to which attention will be given.
I cannot spend time now discussing the most interesting question of the principles upon which pensions should be paid. The hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) enunciated a principle with which I have a great deal of sympathy—personally, more sympathy perhaps than in some quarters of the House—but I feel that the time is rapidly coming when it will be necessary, in an expanding economy with rising standards, to define some principle, which everyone will understand and which will appear to be fair, for regulating pensions and keeping them in line with progressing standards in the community generally.
All we know about Forces pensions at the moment is that increases similar to the Pensions (Increase) Act provisions are to be carried out under the Prerogative Instrument. But at once we come up against the difficulty that, if the statement made by the Minister of Defence in column 9 of Written Answers in the OFFICIAL REPORT on Friday, 2nd November, is the guide, a 12 per cent. increase will be given for the 1956 and


earlier codes, plus £20 for those over 70, while the next increase in the scale will drop to 4 per cent. for the 1960 codes, with £7 for those over 70, and, of course, there will be nothing at all for the 1962 code.
The attempt to marry the escalator of Pensions (Increase) Act provisions to the Forces pensions shows great disparity. Under the pension increase provisions, there are increases of 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 per cent. according to the year of retirement. The Forces increase is 12 per cent., for the pre-1956 pensioners, and 4 per cent. for 1960 pensioners. That is the scale. This shows how different is, or should be, the basis of dealing with Forces pensions in comparison with civilian pensions. They do not tally at all.
The Forces pensioners do not retire in the same annual steps—at least they are not covered for pension purposes at annual rates as is the case with civilian pensions. The result is discrepancies between pensions granted in earlier years and those granted more recently. As far as I can discover, there are bigger disparities than can occur in the Civil Service or in the other public service pension scales.
Then there is the case of the addition for the over-70s. The right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood called it a "booster". The more conventional or respectable Treasury term is "age addition." Civil servants over 70 who got the benefit of the increase may have retired only ten years ago and will have had the benefit in the calculation of the pensions of the higher salaries paid in more recent years.
The great bulk of Forces pensioners who are over 70 retired many years ago, however, at very much lower pay than the current or even the recent standards. There again, there is a disparity between two classes of pensioners which does not seem to be covered by adopting exactly the same structure.

Sir J. Smyth: rose—

Mr. Houghton: I regret that I cannot give way. I have only three minutes more and the House wants to hear the Minister, not me. I must give the Minister the time he wishes.
I think that another thing which has to be specially considered in connection

with Forces pensions is the under-60s. As the right hon. and gallant Gentleman said, it is all right for civilian pensioners who have regular employment to the age of 60, and those who retire before 60 are mostly health cases, in which event they are covered by pension increase provisions, or they have gone out of their own initiative at the age of 50 or later under the provisions of the Superannuation Act, 1959.
I acknowledge that the police and fire services come very close indeed to the conditions of the Armed Forces, because for physical reasons they are required to retire earlier than people in ordinary civilian jobs, but, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) said, it means that probably the great majority of Forces pensioners are excluded completely from all pension increases over the years because they have not reached the age of 60.
Then there is the question of the widows, and here, I think, is quite honestly the most disgraceful feature of the present arrangements. This absurd business of distinguishing between those who were widowed before and after a specified date leads to anomalies between the two which are absolutely indefensible. I need not dwell on them. Hon. Members who have studied the matter can see how indefensible the position is.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. E. Johnson), who I see in his place, during the course of the debate on 23rd November, in column 1641 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, referred to this matter and to the comparatively small cost to the Exchequer of bringing the so-called existing widows, pre-November 1948, into line with future widows. It would be a very small cost, and it would remove a serious anomaly.
I am sure that on both sides of the House this is pin-pointed as one of the reforms which, sooner or later, the Government will have to make, because I am sure that the House will not tolerate this distinction very much longer. I regret—I may have some responsibility, I do not know—that this matter was not thrashed out at the time of the Grigg Report and the ensuing White Paper, but it is probably because we do not have a normal opportunity of discussing what the Government are


proposing to do. It all comes out in a Prerogative Instrument, which is not debatable in this House.
I do not want to spoil the atmosphere of the House at this late hour and so close to Christmas, but the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood, and the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) said some words about the Government which were in strange contrast with what I read in the Spectator the other day. Mr. Angus Maude, who, but for certain difficulties in South Dorset, would have been able to be on the benches opposite tonight, said on 7th December, after castigating the Treasury for having done more harm to the Government than any other institution:
It is not simply that it has been wrong about economics; its whole attitude has been repulsive to intelligent people.
He went on to say:
It has alienated a substantial body of loyal Conservative supporters by an approach to Service pensions that has been mean to the point almost of dishonesty; the amount of resentment caused has been enormous, while the total quantity of money in question has been relatively small.
I could not have said it better myself.

10.44 p.m.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. John Profumo): I am grateful to all those hon. Members on both sides of the House who have persisted in urging the need for this debate on Service pensions, and I am sure that it has been very useful. It has certainly been instructive to me, and I know that if my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence had been here he would have felt the same. I do not need to tell the House the reasons why he was not able to be present this evening, but it is a privilege for me—I must admit a difficult privilege—to reply in his place.
The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said that we had been squeezed out of our pension debates, squeezed out of a full day recently, and also squeezed out of a fair amount of time today. I can only say that we have had a debate, but the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) managed to squeeze us for 40 minutes more, otherwise there might have been more useful

contributions to the debate. I regret the fact that some of my hon. Friend's have not been able to take part.
At the outset I want to make one point clear. My right hon. Friend is responsible only for the pensions of retired Regular Service men and their widows, and not for disabled ex-Service men or for war widows. I say this because the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King)—who has given me notice that he has had to leave—paid some compliments to the authorities for what has been done for ex-Service men, and this would be out of order for me to discuss now.
I have no desire to blind the House with a lot of figures, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) thought I might be going to do. The new Pensions (Increase) Act which has just received the Royal Assent, as the hon. Member for Sowerby said, has the effect of improving the pensions of those who retired from the civilian branches of the public service. I assure him that I shall be submitting the Royal Warrant to Her Majesty tomorrow, so there will be no delay. Ever since the first Pensions (Increase) Bill was passed it has been the traditional practice to follow it up with Prerogative Instruments which apply the same benefits to retired members of the Armed Forces and their widows.
My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood (Brigadier Smyth), in an interesting speech, argued that this is wrong—that the conditions of service in the Armed Forces and the way in which their pensions are calculated are very different from those which apply to the Civil Service, and that therefore it is not right simply to apply to the fighting Services the terms of the Pensions (Increase) Act.
There may be some misunderstanding here. It is true that the terms and conditions of service vary between one Service and another, and it is no doubt for this reason that their pensions differ in amount as well in method of assessment. But once awarded they are subject to the erosion of inflation in exactly the same way. To my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) I say that the fundamental purpose for each Pensions


(Increase) Act is to alleviate the hardships caused by the erosion of inflation since the last Act came into force. I believe, therefore, that it is right to apply the terms of the new Act to the Armed Forces without any modification, as we have always done.
This is not to say that the pension terms of the Armed Forces cannot be altered relative to those of the Civil Service. This could be done at any time, also by Prerogative Instrument, if the Government were satisfied that this was the right thing to do. But, as 1 see it, Service pensions differ from Civil Service pensions in one respect; whereas a civil servant has his pension calculated as a proportion of his salary at the time of his retirement, a member of the Armed Forces has a rate of pension fixed in relation to his rank. From time to time these rates, Which are laid down in a code, are altered—that is to say, a new code is issued—but the rates in the new code are enjoyed only by those who retire after the date on which the code is issued. In addition, those widowed since 1958 have had pensions equal to one-third of their husbands' pensions. Before that they, too had a flat rate, depending on their husbands' rank. Meanwhile, many of these pensioners have benefited to various extents from successive Pensions (Increase) Acts passed since 1944, to which hon. Members on both sides have referred.
It has been suggested that the existing number of pension codes is unnecessarily confusing. There are certainly a number of these codes in operation, but each pensioner is concerned only with one code and, anyway, the variety of individual rates which they produce is certainly no greater than the variety of rates for civil servants, each of whom has a separate assessment related to the length of his career and the amount of his salary in the last three years of his service.
I want now to deal with a few of the main issues which seemed to me to run as a theme through our debate. The first thing to get clear is the purpose of pensions. One thing is clear; these pensions when originally awarded, were never designed to meet any particular level of subsistence, or related to any criteria of need. They were simply intended as rewards for service. I

wonder whether some at least of our difficulties have not arisen from a failure to keep this in mind. It puts occupational pensions in a different category from, say National Insurance or disability pensions.
The next point is that when we are dealing with alterations to existing pensions it would be wrong—at any rate, it has always been said to be wrong—to deal with retired Service men separately or differently from other public service pensioners. To put it no higher, it would be a drastic reversal of the policy adhered to by all parties over many years, and I think that we must look to a solution for our difficulties within the limits of that principle rather than outside it.
In all the controversies which have raged over this question there have been two main opposing positions which, describing them in their extremist forms, we might call immutability and parity. The pure doctrine of immutability would run something like this. A public service pension once awarded is not subject to change except in so far as a severe fall in the value of money gives rise to hardship which has to be alleviated by means of Pension (Increase) Acts. The very wording that I have used shows that immutability is far from sacrosanct even in the minds of its stoutest defenders and when we reflect that the new Act is the seventh since 1944 it will be readily understood why the word "immutability" is seldom used by Government spokesmen.
At the other extreme are those who say that every pensioner, no matter when he retired, should enjoy the same pension terms as if he were retiring today. I suggest that this is a proposition which cannot be sustained. Current pensions are part of a contract or bargain to which the man who retired a long time ago was never a party. Many features of the terms of service in his profession may have changed in the meantime, some for better and some for worse. The contract of service under which he served cannot be reopened. I believe that this would be a fatal objection to parity, even if we disregarded the cost to the taxpayer now estimated at about £90 million for all public service pensioners.
As was said by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwood the real essence of the problem which confronts all of us is inflation—the attempt by many to extract from the economy more than we are putting in. This is a relentless process which has caused serious hardship to many of the worthiest members of the community, not only pensioners but all who live on fixed incomes, and we do all that we can to alleviate the hardship so caused.
Within these limits the new measures are certainly neither unhelpful nor ungenerous. They will put £22 million into pensioners' pockets, a larger measure of help than was provided by any of the six predecessors of the Measure, and they do so in ways designed to give the most help to the oldest pensioners and those who have been on pension longest. I am sure that this must be right. Those who retired in 1956 or earlier will get an increase of 12 per cent. as against an increase in the cost of living of 9 per cent. since the last Act; and there is the extra £20 a year for those over 70. This is the first time that help of this sort has been given.
The hon. Member for Itchen said that perhaps that did not help all the Service people equally. It does not. But it is the case that some of the younger ones are still able, whatever we may feel about this, to do a useful job of work.
I should now like to turn to one or two matters raised by hon. Members during the debate—

Mr. R. T. Paget: rose—

Mr. Profumo: I shall be able to deal with only one if the hon. and learned Member interrupts me.

Mr. Paget: The right hon. Gentleman has now dealt with the main point. The whole problem is the assurance. Either one has the principle of parity or one has the principle of "honest money." "Honest money" is paying the pensions at the purchasing power which they bore when one bargained to give them. That would give a great deal more expense than parity. What the Government are doing is refusing either. They are bilking of paying what they promised to pay in "honest money", and they are also refusing to give parity with the others.

Mr. Profumo: If the hon. and learned Gentleman had not interrupted me, would, perhaps, have dealt with one or two more points that my hon. Friends have made. If he reads my speech he will see, whether he likes it or not, that there is logic in it.
I turn to the question of widows, and I want to say something about them even though I have only five minutes left. This subject was raised by my right hon. and gallant Friend, the hon. Member for Itchen, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey), my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson). In particular, I think that hon. Members have had in mind those widows now on pension whose husbands died before November, 1958.
A percentage increase means that the smaller the existing pension is, the smaller the increase. I accept that the current measures bring only very small cash benefits to those on very small pensions, but, as I have said, the current pensions increase Measures aim to do something towards restoring the original pension of those who have retired. They are not meant to rewrite history and revise the whole basis on which previous awards were made. All the pensions that we are now discussing today were awarded on the basis of services rendered and were never intended to be measures of social security assessed in relation to need.
I know that many Service widows, both of officers and of other ranks, are living in straitened circumstances. Some, indeed, are receiving no Service pension at all, and are, therefore, receiving no benefit from the present Measure. I recognise their plight and sincerely share the sympathy expressed for them. The Government considered with care and sympathy whether it would be possible to extend the improvement given to those who were widowed after 4th November, 1958, to those who had been widowed before that date, but we had to decide that there was no basis on which such widows could be distinguished from any other category of existing pensioners. Any decision to reassess their pension in the light of the recommendations of the


Grigg Committee could only be justified if all other public service pensioners were to be reassessed in parallel.
I did not like the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth that I might be going to talk this evening a lot of "hooey". As I explained, the House need not feel that if the matter is not dealt with in the Prerogative Instrument which will apply to the Services the terms of the Pension (Increase) Act, the opportunity will have been lost. If the Government were in the position to make any changes—I am not to be taken as implying that they will—they could be made at any time. It must be accepted as a general proposition that we cannot depart from the general principle that changes in Service pensions march in step with changes in other public service pensions. We really must not start a game of leap-frog.
I know that there is widespread feeling which has been voiced tonight and in other debates on pensions that we ought to have some satisfactory procedure for ensuring that Pensions (Increase) Measures are introduced when there is need for them. As one hon. Member said, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury mentioned this in his speech on the Bill. If something of that sort were done—if my right hon. Friend were able to do it—it would have its repercussions in the sphere of Service pensions as well.
Many other points were raised. I want to tell my hon. Friends and other hon. Members that as soon as the Minister of Defence gets back I will see that his attention is called to all these points. I know he will study them very carefully indeed. I feel very sorry that I have not been able to give a more definite help to the House in a matter on which I feel very strongly myself, as any Service Minister would, but I think that the fact remains that we have consistently tried

to help the Service pensioner and we have advanced the Service pensions in line with civil pensions. I believe that this is the way to proceed in doing it, at the same time as trying to see that we do not cause more inflation, which would only harm the very people that we are trying to help.

The Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household (Mr. Michael Hughes-Young): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

TANGANYIKA (GIFT OF A SPEAKER'S CHAIR)

Resolution reported,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will give directions that there be presented, on behalf of this House, a Speaker's Chair to the National Assembly of Tanganyika, and assuring Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.

Resolution agreed to.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Select Committee appointed to consider what arrangements should be made for dealing with applications from members of the Armed Forces for release in order to become candidates at Parliamentary elections:

Mr. H. Brooke, Mr. Gordon Walker, Mr. John Hall, Mr. Brian Harrison, Sir Donald Kaberry, Captain Litchfield, Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth. Mr. MacDermot, Mr. Redhead, and Mr. Wigg.

Power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; and to report from time to time:

Four to be the Quorum.—[Mr. lain Macleod.]

BATTLE OF HASTINGS (NINTH CENTENARY)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. I. Fraser.]

11.1 p.m.

Sir Neil Cooper-Key: It is my purpose tonight to raise the subject of a tourist loan to commemorate the ninth centenary of the Battle of Hastings, which will take place in 1966. In an event of this kind there is much that merits support. I think there will be general agreement that it would be boorish to allow an occasion of this kind to pass without adequate recognition. There are two aspects of these celebrations. The narrow and more local one is limited by geography and historical tradition to the area of the Battle of Hastings, the landings, and the historic movements of troops in the area. A committee has already been set up consisting of eleven local authorities and several other interested associations. A strong liaison group is keeping in touch with friends across the Channel. This latter is led by an organisation or society known as Souvenir Normand, which has for many years played a very prominent part in maintaining interest between the south coast ports and Normandy.
The events planned by this local committee consist of, in the first place, a re-enactment of the battle in the form of a pageant on the battlefield. They consider also a tattoo, a sea invasion, a march from York, and a son et lumiere at Hastings Castle. There are other cultural attractions which they have in mind, including an oratorio to be commissioned for 1966. A very strong contact has been made with Glyndebourne and the Sussex Festival Committee. There are many other suggestions deriving from associations in this area of Sussex and Kent seeking to add to the attractions of this area in 1966 and making the season as long as possible. So much for the local aspect of this important year.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will not be unmindful of the importance to this area of these celebrations. The south coast resorts, because

of the extreme war damage they suffered and the changing fashions of holidaymakers, have not shared in the general national prosperity, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear that strongly in mind.
Turning to the wider aspects involved, the tourist trade today is a major money-maker. Visitors to the United Kingdom in 1961 spent £203 million, the fares paid to British carriers amounted to nearly £1 million and the contribution of the travel and tourist industry to our balance of payments was nearly £3 million. Although it is not possible to foresee future trends accurately, three facts stand out clearly. Firstly, the potential value of our tourist earnings will increase greatly by 1966. Secondly, the competition of other countries for this valuable trade will also quicken and be supported in many cases by Government loans and grants which other countries give to their tourist industries, and, thirdly, there is likely to be an increase in the free movement of people in Europe generally, particularly from France; more so if a Channel tunnel or bridge is constructed, and even more so if we enter the European Common Market.
I am suggesting tonight that the Government should seize upon this historical year and build up a period of tourist development within the United Kingdom in this twelve months. This sales campaign could and should be built up around the pageantry of Hastings and the world traveller should be offered during this twelve months the best in culture and entertainment that Windsor, Ffestiniog, Edinburgh, Oxford and Stratford on Avon can offer.
I know that we can look to the British Travel and Holidays Association for support. Those of us who have seen the workings of this organisation, in America, Canada and elsewhere, are full of admiration for the drive which has brought so much foreign currency to this country. Under the able leadership of Lord Mabane and his equally efficient team, this organisation has done tremendous good to build up this very strong balance of payments assistance. But we cannot look to funds from that source.
In a letter dated 3rd September, the President of the Board of Trade wrote to me in reply to my request that a fund should be forthcoming to bolster up the celebrations in 1966. He wrote:
The benefit of a Battle of Hastings commemoration would not be sufficiently widespread to justify the Government seeking Parliamentary approval for a special grant from public funds.
With respect, I believe that that was a somewhat mistaken view. If the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues applied themselves with their customary vigour—and their record in the past few years has been first class in this respect—tu make 1966 a bumper tourist year, with the Battle of Hastings ninth centenary as its theme, they could obtain popular support and much financial contribution from private enterprise.
I hope that when my hon. Friend replies he will not just close the door but will consider calling a conference of the various interests likely to be concerned. I am sure that our French friends are only looking for a lead in order to give support to the carrying out of the suggestions I have made tonight.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: I support everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Sir N. Cooper-Key). All I wish to add arises from his reference to what happens in coastal resorts. As I understand it, the Battle of Hastings took place somewhere near his own home, which, I am happy to say, is in my constituency. I suggest that, perhaps, Battle should receive some consideration in this matter.

11.11 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Alan Green): First, I wish well to my hon. Friends the Members for Hastings (Sir N. Cooper-Key) and for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) and the constituencies for which they have spoken tonight. I am glad to hear the tribute paid to the British Travel and Holidays Association. I know that it will be appreciated, and I believe it to be deserved.
Some years ago, historical opinion might have been divided as to whether the event to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings refers was a matter for celebration or the reverse. Although

one of the genuinely decisive battles of the world, Hastings was, after all, one of the very few occasions on which an English army was overcome on English soil by a foreign invader. I am told that certain French authorities might be interested in contributing to the proposed celebrations, and I find this quite understandable. Our own interest may be less obvious.
However, historical thought is liable to fluctuation. Today, we are less ready to ascribe all the liberal virtues to our Saxon ancestors and all the qualities of a Victorian hero to Harold Godwinson. Ours is, in fact, a nation of many strands —as the poet put it."Saxon and Norman and Dane"—and I agree entirely with my hon. Friends that some sort of celebration of the events of 1066 is appropriate and important.
I particularly welcome the proposed celebrations because, as Minister of State at the Board of Trade, I have a special interest in the tourist industries in this country and in anything that can be done to attract additional visitors from overseas. Tourist earnings are one of our largest invisible exports. As my hon. Friend said, last year, overseas visitors spent upwards of £203 million—I think that the exact figure is £205 million—in addition to their payments to British carriers.
It looks as though we shall, this year, have something approaching 2 million visitors, 7 per cent. more than in 1961. Year by year since the war, the number of tourists coming here, and the amount they spend, have been going up. I believe that the figures will steadily increase, and I am advised—though this involves looking rather a long way ahead—that the celebrations planned by Hastings for 1966 are likely to be an important tourist draw and to make our final score for that year even higher than it otherwise would be.
Tourist publicity works in a cumulative way and events of this kind can be used not only to publicise the local attractions and to bring visitors to the celebrations themselves, as my hon. Friend pointed out, but also as an advertising theme to increase interest generally in Britain's history and culture and, in a general sense, to promote the interests of this country.
Having said that, however, I must make clear that the Government cannot contribute financially to the celebrations. There are two reasons for this. The first is the difficulty of selecting one particular event of this nature for special assistance. There is no provision in the Board of Trade's Vote from which a grant or loan could be made towards a pageant or mock battle or special event, however great a tourist attraction we might believe it to be. I do not think that we should be justified in seeking authority to do something for this project, when the organisers of a great many other events could probably claim that these were of similar national importance and equally valuable as publicity.
That reason, the danger of creating a precedent, is not of itself over-riding, but our second difficulty is much more fundamental. The Government's concern with the development of tourism to this country is shown through the support which they give to the British Travel and Holidays Association. The steady and gratifying increase in the number of tourists in recent years is to a large extent due to the successful efforts of that association, which is recognised as a leader in its own sphere throughout the world. The Government have given this body central responsibility for the rôle of tourist promotion and the total sum which we think it right to allocate to this task is paid over to the association in the form of grant in aid. This is a quite substantial sum. Last year, it was £1,050,000 and this year, it is £1,400,000. We leave it to the association, as the experts, to use this money in the way which they judge will be the most effective. Having taken that decision, it would be inconsistent for us to attempt to do special jobs of tourist promotion "on the side".
I assure my hon. Friends that the British Travel and Holidays Association is enthusiastic about the battle celebrations. The association has undertaken to give substantial publicity to the festivities in its overseas advertising. At this stage, it is too early to say in exactly what way this scheme would be worked out in an advertising campaign in 1965 or even in 1964. The association believes that it will be able to make a national rather than a local theme of it with the indirect benefits that I have

mentioned. The people in the association are the experts in this matter and this sort of job is right up their street.
As, I am sure, it will be agreed, advertising in the travel world has certain peculiar characteristics. This is because the people who provide the actual goods and services that tourists use are interested not in selling tourism as such, but in selling their own products, and this is perfectly natural. Only a central body with all-embracing interests can deliberately sell the idea of tourism in a certain country or region.
It is for that reason and because of the interest which all Governments have in tourist earnings that all countries which take their tourist industry seriously, as we do, have a central Government-supported organisation to co-ordinate promotional work. This is the primary task of the British Travel and Holidays Association. I know that the Association will be able to apply all its experience in this field to publicise the Battle of Hastings celebrations. In addition, the association will be pleased to put its advice at the disposal of the promoters when they reach the stage of arranging publicity in this country.
The association's job is to publicise Britain and its attractions and it has never felt itself able to dilute its efforts by diverting resources to the provision of financial support for tourist attractions. In these other interests that I have mentioned, the association is willing to help. No doubt, the Celebrations Council will be getting in touch with it when its plans are more firm. I am sure that with this assistance, the celebrations will be a great success. Certainly, I hope that they will be.
It has been suggested that I might sponsor a meeting of interested parties. From what I have said, it will, I hope, be clear that we welcome the proposals of the Celebrations Council and are anxious to do anything we properly can to help. So I certainly do not close my mind to the possibility of arranging such a meeting. I do not, however, claim to be an expert on the technical problems involved either in refighting the Battle of Hastings or in exploiting the year 1966 to the best advantage as a tourist attraction. For this reason, it occurs to me that perhaps a better person to take the chair at such a meeting,


if he could be persuaded to do so, would be the chairman of the British Travel and Holidays Association. I say this without the advantage of any discussion with the chairman, who is at this moment on his way to Australia to look after our promotional efforts there, and of course I cannot commit him in personal terms in any way. I would also suggest that the date of a meeting might with advantage be postponed until a little nearer the time. Perhaps I might discuss the various possibilities with my hon. Friend, which I am very willing to do.
It follows, I think that while I must, with some personal regret, turn down the request for financial assistance from the Government, I cannot close without once more congratulating the promoters on the task that they have taken in hand and promising that we shall be following what they are doing with sympathetic interest, and if I can personally in my own way do anything to help them I will do it. Perhaps this will come out at the meeting to which I have referred.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past Eleven o'clock.